External hard drive disconnects

[canadian lamp]

My external hard drive disconnects intermittently ( with the... your just was not ejected properly..) error and is no longer able to wake up without a power cycle Of the external HDD. this only happens in Monterey and never in a previous OS. I only recently upgraded to Monterey. Issue never happened in Big Sur. the amount of time passing between disconnects can vary between 10 minutes to Many days.

so far I have tried

1. SMC/ Pram reset
2. changed USB cable with another brand Of cable. they are both 10 feet but it worked fine in Big Sur.
3. energy saver settings: ( unchanged, but here the settings)
   1. uncheck putting hard drives to sleep.
   2. check preventing Mac from sleeping when display is off.
   3. no power nap.
4. sudo pmset -g can terminal. Disksleep set to zero (It always was)
5. Tried a different USB port. Tried USB port through a thunderbolt dock.
6. tried waking up hard drive from another Mac without power cycling. No dice.
7. if I connect HDD for 20 minutes to do a Time Machine backup and intentionally disconnect after 20 minutes. I am okay. I can then leave the hard drive powered on for multiple days, and then reconnect the USB cable. Everything is fine.
8. The partitions seem to be fine.
9. Updated from 12.3.0 to 12.3.1

With all experienced above, the only hypothesis I can draw is that the Mac Is somehow sleeping the HDD in such a way that it is no longer responsive to any communication to the USB port Since this issue prevented another older OS Mac from seeing the hard drive disk utility.

the hard drive is a Western Digital red from a few years ago.Third-party enclosure

what else can I possibly try?Any other hypothesis?
- CL

 

[Fishrrman]

I can't offer a solution, but be aware that you aren't the only one with such problems.
MANY other users are complaining as well.
Numerous threads about that here at macrumors...

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Lots of us have this issue. I've pounded through everything I think we users can try. Best I can tell it's either Monterey (but some with Big Sur have this issue too) or M1 hardware. It "seems" to be much more prevalent with HDD vs. SSD externals and some enclosures work better than others.

For example, a perfectly working OWC 2-HDD RAID box I have will not stay connected longer than about 3 hours to my new Studio (though perfectly stable on older Intel-based Macs). My substitute "fix" until Apple gets around to debugging USB connections is a new OWC Ministack STX with 1 HDD. That's been perfectly stable (connected) for about 9 days now with no unexpected ejections. I just had to burn a few more hundred dollars for it and a BIG hard drive to get back about HALF of the storage temporarily(?) lost by the sidelined RAID.

What's different between the 2:

• RAID vs. single drive,
• 2 Intel Macs vs. M1 Mac,
• MacOS versions < BigSur vs. Monterey and
• a Thunderbolt connection vs. tries at both USB-A and USB-C connections on the Studio.

I have had much better luck testing single drive HDD connections to this Studio, including using ancient ones dug out of retirement to try to pin down whether the issue was Studio hardware vs. Monterey software. ALL of my single-drive HDDs stayed connected well. I don't think there is an actual hardware defect.

While sleep seems to be a big player in this issue, mine will "unexpectedly eject" even with both definitely awake. For example, I've had a couple of instances of it disconnecting while transferring files from it to Studio... so obviously neither part is asleep during those instances.

I've seen a few posts by people claiming that since upgrading to Monterey on Intel Macs, this has been a problem for them too. So that may rule out bullet #2 while adding some fuel to bullet #3.

Bottom line: I don't think there is a USER solution to be found on this issue. I strongly suspect USB-based bugs in Monterey as most likely... which means we need Apple to fix it. Hopefully they will get around to it.

In the meantime, you might just "give up" as I finally did and buy a different enclosure hoping for a different result. For now the U in USB doesn't mean what it is supposed to mean. Instead, its more like MSB (for Maybe Serial Bus) or LSB (for Lucky Serial Bus). I miss "just works."

 

[w5jck]

Some of the issues might be related to hubs and cables and cable adapters. My MacBook Air M1 2020 has two USB-C/TB ports. But they seem somewhat finicky with which hubs and cables I use. Cheap cables might have issues. Also make sure the cables and hubs are at least USB 3.0, and preferably 3.1 or greater level. Ditto for hubs. I tried an older Anker USB A 3.0 hub (with San adapter to USB-C) and I had some issues with the HTML port thereon as well as my Samsung T5 disconnecting the way you described. Both were plugged into the hub. I got a Satechi USB-C hub and both issues went away. I had two USB A ethernet adapters with issues too, but replaced the old ones with newer USB-C models and that issue went away. I suspect Apple needs to clean up the port code in Monterey.

 

[Artiste212]

Some of the issues might be related to hubs and cables and cable adapters. My MacBook Air M1 2020 has two USB-C/TB ports. But they seem somewhat finicky with which hubs and cables I use. Cheap cables might have issues. Also make sure the cables and hubs are at least USB 3.0, and preferably 3.1 or greater level. Ditto for hubs. I tried an older Anker USB A 3.0 hub (with San adapter to USB-C) and I had some issues with the HTML port thereon as well as my Samsung T5 disconnecting the way you described. Both were plugged into the hub. I got a Satechi USB-C hub and both issues went away. I had two USB A ethernet adapters with issues too, but replaced the old ones with newer USB-C models and that issue went away. I suspect Apple needs to clean up the port code in Monterey.

What solved this issue for me was to get a *powered* USB3 hub and connect my external drives to that. Not one problem in the 6 months since then. An unpowered USB3 hub and an unpowered USBC to USB3 hub didn't help.

 

[NoBoMac]

What @w5jck and @Artiste212 said.

Another piece of the puzzle that happened for me: I'm using a 3rd party charger that has a USB-C port along with a USB-A port for total of 61W delivery. If I plug in an HDD to the Mac, all is fine. If I try to charge my phone via the USB-A port on the charger at the same time, drive disconnects.

My Anker 3-port USB-A hub can handle two HDDs when USB-C is powering it (hub uses a total of 15W; at times does fine without power), but as soon as the charger's USB-A port is plugged in to charge my phone, boom.

 

[satcomer]

This tells me if plan to have External hard Drive make sure if you use a Hub make it powered by it's own cord! These self port powered ones are only good for thumb drives!

 

[w5jck]

What solved this issue for me was to get a *powered* USB3 hub and connect my external drives to that. Not one problem in the 6 months since then. An unpowered USB3 hub and an unpowered USBC to USB3 hub didn't help.

The Anker USB A 3.0 hub was powered through the PD port via a 65w wall charger, but it still gave me issues. I’m using the same charger with the Satechi USB-C 3.1 hub. I also had a couple USB A 3.0 adapters for ethernet that gave me issues. So maybe the USB-C/TB ports don’t get along well with USB 3.0 adapters, cables, and hubs. Not sure. But all is good now with the Satechi hub which I bought from Apple.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Again hit or miss. I worked through 3 powered hubs and one self powered and all would “unexpectedly eject” my HDD RAID box… seemingly no different than if directly connected to Studio. Obviously working for some combinations of hardware but not others. Pay close attention to specific hardware that is working and perhaps buy that from a source that allows free returns just in case you find it won’t work for you.

The latest one I’ve tried is OWC Ministack STX. I put a big single HDD in it when I gave up on the RAID working. It works as a consistently-connected solo HDD drive… about 9 days now, including through overnight Mac sleeps every night.

Then the idea hit me to try the RAID plugged into it: Studio to Ministack to RAID. RAID unexpectedly ejects in around 3 hours max but Ministack drive in the hub remains connected. That’s powered hub AND powered enclosure.

Also if someone is claiming some hub solves this problem, make sure they are attaching a HDD instead of an SSD. It seems some people consider the latter “hard disks” too. However, it seems SSD externals are generally working much better than HDDs vs. this problem.

Lastly, this problem can not show itself for hours. Some people are getting more than a day out of connections before it unexpectedly ejects. So buying on someone’s claim of something working fine needs a question about whether they are maintaining a lengthy connection vs. short-term connections. For example, if I was manually ejecting my RAID in maybe 1 hour, I might not even know there is a problem yet.

 

[iDento]

The Anker USB A 3.0 hub was powered through the PD port via a 65w wall charger, but it still gave me issues. I’m using the same charger with the Satechi USB-C 3.1 hub. I also had a couple USB A 3.0 adapters for ethernet that gave me issues. So maybe the USB-C/TB ports don’t get along well with USB 3.0 adapters, cables, and hubs. Not sure. But all is good now with the Satechi hub which I bought from Apple.

You mean the Satechi Slim Dock hub? I have one of these to use with my blue iMac and it looks great. However, I have an issue with the 2TB WD NVMe SSD inside. Each time I transfer a file that is more a couple of GBs it disconnects. That does not happen with disks connected via USBs in the same mentioned hub. It renders both the disk and the hub useless and I’ve been looking for a solution for weeks now.

 

[kibepo73]

There can be various issues that cause an external drive keep unmounting/disconnecting on mac:

• The hard drive didn't plug-in properly
• The Data cable is damaged
• The USB cable connector got damaged
• Hardware or software issue.
• A USB port is damaged

Furthermore, there is a risk of data corruption as well while transferring data between the external drive and Mac. However, to fix the issue, you can try the below fixes:

• Check if your mac is recognizing the drive
• Resolve an issue using the disk utility
• Change finder settings in your mac
• Recover or backup your drive
• Change the drive’s format

Hope this will help!

 

[TinRobot]

I am having the same problem with my M1 Mini and my external powered Lacie HDD plugged directly into mini via USB3. Two other drives, but only this one ejects when Mac is asleep. The drive is my Time Machine backup. The other two drives do not eject, only this one. The other two are 1. HDD via USB3 via USB3 hub and an SSD directly to the mini. Running Monterey.

Any ideas why or how to fix? Does all this ejecting damage the disk?

 

[brvid]

I have the same problem. A 2017 iMac pro with Monterey. I have several external HDDs that are connected via UBS directly to the iMac's USB ports using the supplied drive to usb cables. I also have several Toshiba SSD's connected directed to the iMac using Anker Thunderbolt cables. The cables and connections are are direct and quality as is possible and all the drives will eject sometime between minutes and a 24-hours from my manually remounting them. I now have all the Powered HDD's plugged into one powerstrip so I can just toggle the on/off button and as they powerup they temporarily remount, untill they decide to umount again.