... The problem isn't your lack of patience, as others have wrongly suggested ...
Agree. Waiting for many minutes to hours on end for a erase / format operation isn't really the solution. As even after it may actually finish there is an issue that is happening and it will happen each time your machine reboots (and probably wakes up from sleep also).
Whether it's Monterey (Apple) or Sandisk - the issue is significant.
I've a 500 GB Sandisk Extreme (v1) USB C. The device takes FOREVER to get recognized by Monterey [no issues and super fast on High Sierra (iMac), Catalina (MacBook Air) and Big Sur devices (M1 Mac Mini)]. On Monterey (M1 MacBook 14) its dog slow / almost inoperable.
When you hook up this small drive (500gb) - encrypted APFS - it takes way too long to attempt to mount. Eventually it'll mount (~ 5 - 10 mins) but once mounted will be slow. Accessing files via Finder is like slow motion animation as you click on a directory and it expands to show contents, etc..
Running any speed test (Black Magic or AJA) with that disk as a target on Monterey you'll initially see speeds of approx 1-5 MB/sec. If you leave your machine alone (not running any tests) for another 10-15 mins and run the test again you may see improvement and speeds of ~ 250-350 MB/sec. You'll face the same issue again if you reboot your machine (and most likely if it goes to sleep and wakes up again).
If you decide you want to ERASE and reformat the drive -- that will take a LONG time. With this 500GB drive - an ERASE and Format operation (APFS Encrypted) - it must have sat there erasing for around 10-15 mins and then partitioning the drive for ~ 1 hr and then it finished the operation successfully (I've done the numerous times on prior MacOS versions and it all happens within 2-10 seconds or less with this very drive before and again after I did above).
So definitely some issue with the interaction of the Sandisk Firmware / controller stack with Monterey USB / storage / filesystem drivers.
I know there has been zero change on my Sandisk from a firmware perspective. It's obvious something changed in Monterey's USB / storage / file system stack (might well be for the better long term) that is impacting this and possibly other devices.
I have a feeling this is going to have to be addressed by Apple and not Sandisk (as they don't have a way to update firmware for MacOS only users). If Apple doesn't do something to enable these devices to actually be functionally usable again they most likely bricks for us end users as they aren't really functionally usable.
Just my two cents on this. Any line Apple is feeding all of us that its a Sandisk (or XYZ vendor) issue isn't actually helpful at all. It well might be a Sandisk issue and their implementation of some standards (or lack of proper implementation) in the past. BUT that issue didn't seem to rear its head until Apple made some changes to the Apple controlled software stack. Apple should have implemented their change(s) in a manner that it supported the older method as well as their newer method in interacting with these devices (you'd think they actually do some QC with various popular accessories such as external USB C drives ... LOL)
Not sure if this is impacting all Sandisk Extreme variants. Sandisk makes the following models:
- Sandisk Extreme (V1)
- Sandisk Extreme Pro (V1)
- Sandisk Extreme (V2)
- Sandisk Extreme Pro (V2)
[edited to fix typos / grammar / etc]
