Impossible. There is no way to for Apple to test thousands of enclosures from hundreds of vendors with heaven only knows how many firmware versions. Only solution is to stick to a 1st tier vendor who will support you if you have problems and file a feedback report to Apple asking them to test if you have a problem. No way to tell which side (Apples' or vendors') is failing. Apple could just be rigorously enforcing the transfer protocol and the vendor might not.
Apple doesn't have to test every possible enclosure, they need to simply get the U in USB doing what it promises. What does that U stand for again? Macs have had USB generally "just work"ing for 20+ years now.
I genuinely do not believe this is an enclosure problem- far too many people reporting this kind of thing using far too much variety of hardware. I think port management in macOS Monterey (and probably Big Sur based on many people sharing this problem too) is home to the solution to this one.
Again, the general theme of this problem is:
- works fine connected to Intel Macs running macOS before Monterey/Big Sur
- unexpectedly ejects connected to Silicon Mac running macOS Monterey (and Big Sur per some reports).
If it's the SAME cable and SAME hardware, it's pretty hard to redirect blame at a wide variety of vendors. IMO- if it "just works" with Intel Macs, it should "just work" with Silicon Macs. The vendors seem to have created stuff that does "just work" with Macs. Apple seems to have missed something in Monterey/Big Sur code that is causing this problem. Else, Silicon itself has issues (but this seems less likely since there is another pool of people who do not have this problem... and frankly, I'd rather believe my new $6K Mac spun at "latest & greatest" can have this kind of problem resolved by an OS update in spite of
other concerning information like this).
Personalizing this: I have an enclosure that works just fine on all of my Intel Macs running macOS
before Monterey. The enclosure is by OWC. Is OWC a "1st tier" vendor? I've always thought so. My replacement solution is ANOTHER enclosure from OWC. That one remains connected to Mac Studio running latest Monterey just fine... for months now. That's fundamental to the nature of this issue: some stuff "just works" and some stuff doesn't... but lots of the "doesn't" will just work again if attached with the
same cable to Intel Macs pre Monterey.
I wish I could temporarily install macOS pre-Big Sur on this Studio to conclusively prove or disprove my own assumption. Having tried
everything related to typical redirection of cable/box/tweaks/user/try powered hub/etc, I'm convinced there is a bug(s) in the port management software of Monterey (probably left over from Big Sur) affecting a variety of hardware that can be connected to ports but not all hardware. I suspect it has something to do with power sipping code dropping down to levels too low to maintain the connection to select hardware. Thus, "sleep" seems to be one big catalyst for unexpected ejections but I've had it do that while actively transferring files from drive to Mac (absolutely not asleep). I further suspect that ports are generally quickly "rebooting" several times each day- as I notice the ethernet port does this. When a website seems hung, if I quickly flip to wifi, it immediately loads. If
that port is quickly "rebooting" I wonder if USB ports are too and thus driving "unexpected ejections" with select hardware. I can't prove/disprove either guess but I do suspect there is something there.
Apple consumers are left with no way to easily know what will and won't work other than just trying stuff and returning what doesn't maintain a connection. My own case shows that consumers can't even segregate by vendor as one box from OWC doesn't work (with Monterey on Silicon) and another does.
