Can't see external 18TB drive on 2011 Mac mini

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

So I bought a new 18TB HDD and a USB-C/SATA cabinet for our Plex server, a 2011 Mac mini running High Sierra 13.6.8. The external drive shows up fine on my M3 MBA, where I formatted it to APFS, but doesn't appear at all on my 2011 Mac mini. Nothing in Finder, Disk Utility, or under USB in System Profile. The only difference between the two situations, is that I swapped the USB-C USB-C cable for a USB-A USB-C cable, to be able to connect the drive to the Mac mini. The cabinet runs on its own external power supply.

Is 13.6.8 too old for 18TB drives? Is APFS a problem for 13.6.8? Unfortunately I only have a single USB-C USB-A cable, so I can't verify if that is the problem, although that is likely where I am leaning towards being the problem.

Edit: Turns out I did have a spare USB-C USB-A cable, and now the disk shows up. Bad cable was indeed the answer! Still looking for an answer for the below though.

Also, after buying the cabinet for the HDD, I noticed in the manual that its upper limit is 10TB. Will that be an issue? macOS reports the external drive as 18TB, so it seems to recognize it just fine.

 

[PaulD-UK]

Very often manufacturers specify the largest drive size when they design the case. This is because HD standards may change in the future.
If a bigger drive works then fine, use it.
Maybe only when you get over 10TB of data on it you might find a problem?

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Very often manufacturers specify the largest drive size when they design the case. This is because HD standards may change in the future.

Also my thought.

Maybe only when you get over 10TB of data on it you might find a problem?

Also my fear.

Currently copying files to it, so when I hit 13 TB, we will likely know.