External Drive Corrupting on Reboot

[Fatus_Asticus]

I've been having a ton of issues with an external drive on my Mini. Updated to newest OS. This occurred under previous versions.

I have an 8 TB Western Digital. The drive is fine, works great on windows without issue, usually works fine on Mac except for one huge issue.

This has happened three times and and it is really pissing me off. When my mini reboots I basically lose the external partition and it corrupts, losing all data. This is a general storage / media drive. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have to download all this stuff again, again and again.

The drive is formatted APFS. Seems to be an issue with the drive getting dumped from the mini without ejecting on reboot. I think it's ridiculous to have to manually eject drives every single reboot. You are one power failure away from losing everything that is completely unacceptable in any modern computing scenario.

Is this a function of me using APFS? If I switch to a different format might it prevent this?

Disk utility is useless. Repair functions throw errors

error: Unable to perform deferred repairs without full space verification
The container /dev/disk4s2 could not be verified completely.
Storage system check exit code is 8.
Storage system verify or repair failed. : (-69716)


warning: (oid 0x1c491) apfs_root: btn: invalid o_cksum (0x0)
error: (oid 0x1c491) apfs_root: btn: found zeroed-out block
warning: aborting jobj validations for current fsck pass - trying to repair fsroot tree with invalid nodes
warning: (oid 0x2e438) apfs_root: btn: invalid o_cksum (0x0)
error: (oid 0x2e438) apfs_root: btn: found zeroed-out block
Checking the extent ref tree.
warning: (oid 0x7bd332) apfs_extentref: btn: invalid o_cksum (0x0)
error: (oid 0x7bd332) apfs_extentref: btn: found zeroed-out block
Extent ref tree is invalid.
The volume /dev/rdisk5s1 was found to be corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Verifying allocated space.
Performing deferred repairs.
error: Unable to perform deferred repairs without full space verification
error: Try running fsck against the entire APFS container instead of a volume
The volume /dev/rdisk5s1 could not be verified completely.
File system check exit code is 8.
Restoring the original state found as unmounted.
File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845)

Operation failed…



I like my Macs but this is a little ridiculous.

 

[Fishrrman]

If it's a platter-based HDD that will be used for data storage only (not a boot drive or a time machine backup), then DON'T format it for APFS.

APFS can make platter-based drives highly fragmented, and you often get a lot of "disk-thrashing" if they are APFS.

Instead, format it for plain, old HFS+ (Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format). I predict it will work better that way.

 

[Fatus_Asticus]

If it's a platter-based HDD that will be used for data storage only (not a boot drive or a time machine backup), then DON'T format it for APFS.

APFS can make platter-based drives highly fragmented, and you often get a lot of "disk-thrashing" if they are APFS.

Instead, format it for plain, old HFS+ (Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format). I predict it will work better that way.

I ended up going exfat I’m going to see if it helps. I did a windows compatible format so I didn’t have to worry about losing the data again. If it does happen I can verify the drive on my windows rig and decide if I want to eBay my macs lol

I agree, I think the format is the issue. I’ll test it later today if I get to it.

 

[toke lahti]

If it's a platter-based HDD that will be used for data storage only (not a boot drive or a time machine backup), then DON'T format it for APFS.

APFS can make platter-based drives highly fragmented, and you often get a lot of "disk-thrashing" if they are APFS.

Instead, format it for plain, old HFS+ (Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format). I predict it will work better that way.

diskutil APFS defragment

 

[Trappist99]

I've just purchased a Mac Studio Max M2 with a 2TB SSD. Spent the week trying to get familiar with it as it's been 10 years since I've used a Mac. I purchase a 2TB Extreme Pro Sandisk for additional space which I received pre-formatted as exFat.

I'm experiencing the same as the original poster. On restart, Ventura reports the drive can't be read and want’s to initialize. Plugging it back into my windows machine confirms the drive needs to be reformatted. This is second time around after reformatting as exFat and transferring 1TB of photos to this drive, using as a back up.

 

[Fishrrman]

"2TB Extreme Pro Sandisk"

I've read elsewhere that these SSDs can be problematic with Macs.
Might have something to do with firmware.

Are you going to use this drive ONLY with the Mac?
If so, then DON'T format it to a PC format like exFAT.

Instead, use "Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format".
Or, try "APFS, GUID partition format".

 

[Brian33]

I purchase a 2TB Extreme Pro Sandisk for additional space which I received pre-formatted as exFat.

I'm experiencing the same as the original poster.

I think there are problems with that particular SSD with Macs. I came across this thread which might have relevant info: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/disk-not-ejected-properly-error-sandisk-extreme-2tb.2372407/