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External Hard Drives Disconnecting

J

JamesMay82

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 12, 2009
1,533
1,245
Backstory:

I''ve been running a 2014 5k iMac and Lacie 2Big 6 TB. Since day one the Thunderbolt always kept disconnecting when I came back to the computer after leaving it overnight. I then moved to its USB3 connection and its been fine.

I now have a drobo 5C with USB C via USB dongle and its not been disconecting but the file system keeps getting corrupted. Drobo Tech said its strange but maybe has something to do with iMac going to sleep etc.

I've now set up the iMac to just dim the screen but keep internal hard drives running etc and both externals now seem to be working fine and no disconnects for a few days .

I have some questions though now..

1. Why would Thunderbolt give me disconnects but USB wouldn't?
2. Why is it not disconnecting Drobo but instead corrupting the file system.
3. The lace drive doesn't seem to go into stand by mode i.e. fans always on.. is this Normal?

Thanks
 
Some people recommended updating Lacie Desktop Manager, but I had moved on from the brand by then. It definitely was not a Thunderbolt or an Apple issue, or one relating to power nap, as the Thunderbolt/Thunderbolt 2 products I use now all work flawlessly and never randomly disconnect (and literally, every last one of my secondary storage mediums, including TB, eSATA, USB 2.0 HDDs, SSDs, flash drives, & SD cards, and my USB hub, run through my TB2 dock and function flawlessly...even if I am connected to 10+ disks simultaneously.) I think some product lines have done a better job implementing Thunderbolt than others?
 
entropyfl said:
Backstory:

I''ve been running a 2014 5k iMac and Lacie 2Big 6 TB. Since day one the Thunderbolt always kept disconnecting when I came back to the computer after leaving it overnight. I then moved to its USB3 connection and its been fine.

I now have a drobo 5C with USB C via USB dongle and its not been disconecting but the file system keeps getting corrupted. Drobo Tech said its strange but maybe has something to do with iMac going to sleep etc.

I've now set up the iMac to just dim the screen but keep internal hard drives running etc and both externals now seem to be working fine and no disconnects for a few days .

I have some questions though now..

1. Why would Thunderbolt give me disconnects but USB wouldn't?
2. Why is it not disconnecting Drobo but instead corrupting the file system.
3. The lace drive doesn't seem to go into stand by mode i.e. fans always on.. is this Normal?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I think Sierra has a lot of Thunderbolt/USB sleep issues. I have the Drobo 5D which ran fine until Sierra. Now I can run the Drobo with Thunderbolt no problem until I try to sleep, then the Drobo stays awake and basically stops Thunderbolt throughput to my Monitor. I have to shut down everything reboot everything and it works fine again.

I too tried USB3 and that does put the Drobo to sleep, only now I get the improper disconnect message every so often out of the blue.
 
hick9 said:
I think Sierra has a lot of Thunderbolt/USB sleep issues. I have the Drobo 5D which ran fine until Sierra. Now I can run the Drobo with Thunderbolt no problem until I try to sleep, then the Drobo stays awake and basically stops Thunderbolt throughput to my Monitor. I have to shut down everything reboot everything and it works fine again.

I too tried USB3 and that does put the Drobo to sleep, only now I get the improper disconnect message every so often out of the blue.
Click to expand...

I have 2 Drobo 5D and the drives would disconnect out of the blue after waking my Mac from sleep and sometimes would not mount due to problems with the file system even though Drobo Dashboard could see them. I had to pay for Disk Warrior but luckily at least the software has been able to get it fixed so far. Like above I have also disabled my Mac from sleeping and the problem seemed to have gone.
 
Just ran into this issue as well after moving my LaCie from a dedicated ThunderBolt port on the M1 Mac Mini to a TB chain. First in the chain is a OWC drive, directly connected to the Mac Mini and the LaCie is second in that chain. Since the Mac Mini only has two TB ports, I needed the second one for the display because there have been some issues with the HDMI port as well. My LaCie was working fine on its dedicated port. Prior to the Mac Mini, I had a trash can MacPro and the drive was also connected on its own port, no issues there either.

Ever since moving the drive to a chain, I've been having issues. Today it's gotten so bad that none of my drives were showing up (not even in Disk Utility) which is pretty scary. Had to completely un/replug both drives for them to come back online. I definitely need a solution and apparently, LaCie acknowledges that there are issues because they have a dedicated support page for it: https://www.lacie.com/support/kb/disk-not-ejected-properly-on-mac/. These are either workarounds or common sense tips, it doesn't seem like LaCie actually has a fix or intends to provide one. Looks like my only solution is preventing the Mac from sleep, which incidentally would also "fix" my wake-from-sleep issue with the M1 Mac Mini. :rolleyes:
 
I also have this disconnecting issue. In my case 2018 MBP which has only tb3 ports and an USB 3.0 enclosure with Seagate HDD, used for backup.
I am thinking to buy a tb4 hub to use it between the enclosure and Mac.
Does somebody have experience with tb4 hubs, they are also disconnecting?
 
Nope, not working unfortunately. All it did was resetting my MBP settings such as the famous boot on lead up!
 
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