Mac Mini M1 crashing with external hard drive.

[aajeevlin]

So far, I have had this issue almost once a day, I'm thinking its the external HDD (However, I did not observe this with my base 8/256 Mac Mini M1).

I received the new 16/512 on the Dec 10th, since I already have my 8/256 M1 running so I simply swap over external HDD (This same external HDD was mounted to my base Mac Mini M1 for at least a week without any issues). Comes Dec 12th, I came into my office only to see a login screen with both of my wife and my account logged out, I know it's not her because she doesn't actually use this computer. Thinking it was just a one time thing, I logged back in and went on with my business. Come afternoon, coming back to the computer I got another login screen. At first I thought maybe it's because of a new software that I have installed so I decided to close the software. Things seems to have gotten okay, until this morning Dec 14th, when I tired to log in I can hear my external HDD tried to spin up, and I lost keyboard/mouse control then all the sudden I see a pink screen flash by and reboot then back to the login screen.

Has anyone else experienced this? Whats weird is that I didn't have this issues with the same external HDD plugged into my base 8/256 M1. Not sure what's going on. I was getting ready to return the base 8/256, now I'm thinking maybe I should just not even deal with the M1 at all and just grab a refurbished Mac Mini to tie me over for the next few years.

 

[pmiles]

Sounds more like a wake from sleep issue than a crash. Big Sur Beta release candidate 11.1.1 solves a lot of issues on the new M1 Macs. May solve this issue as well. You need to sign up for access to it. Otherwise you have to wait it out until Apple releases it to the masses.

M1s are pioneer territory. There are going to be problems with them. It's only through real world usage/testing that these issues come to light and get fixed. The release candidate is their compilation of fixes for all the issues discovered and fixed so far. Big Sur is in it's infancy as well, so brand new OS and a brand new architecture equals double the fun.

 

[aajeevlin]

Sounds more like a wake from sleep issue than a crash. Big Sur Beta release candidate 11.1.1 solves a lot of issues on the new M1 Macs. May solve this issue as well. You need to sign up for access to it. Otherwise you have to wait it out until Apple releases it to the masses.

M1s are pioneer territory. There are going to be problems with them. It's only through real world usage/testing that these issues come to light and get fixed. The release candidate is their compilation of fixes for all the issues discovered and fixed so far. Big Sur is in it's infancy as well, so brand new OS and a brand new architecture equals double the fun.

Thanks, I'm just getting to upgrade to 11.1, funny thing during the update I got hit with the random screen saver issues that I couldn't get out. So I had to restart the computer, now I'm redownloading the entire update again....sigh

 

[ant69]

i had a similar issue a couple of times....

i had a couple of external hard drives plugged into my M1 mac mini and was copying data between them, it pink screened then reported, eventually i got the data copied over, i didnt have any keyboard/mouse loss though at the time (i am using bluetooth)

Ant

 

[Fishrrman]

How about telling us about the external drive.
What manufacturer?
USB2? USB3? Something else?
What FORMAT is the drive in?
What partitioning scheme (GUID, something else)?

 

[aajeevlin]

How about telling us about the external drive.
What manufacturer?
USB2? USB3? Something else?
What FORMAT is the drive in?
What partitioning scheme (GUID, something else)?

Sorry I seems to have traced this to the sleep wake kernel panic issue with Big Sur.
But for what you are asking it’s a easystorage?by WD 10TB APFS formatted.

 

[jabbawok]

I had the same issue with a cheapo Cit USB3 enclosure with a 1TB APFS formatted HDD. M1 Mini kept resetting itself until I disconnected it. also took forever to mount, even before the M1 mini. I wonder if APFS is not ideal on external HDDS. maybe Exfat might be better.

 

[Fishrrman]

jab wrote:
"I wonder if APFS is not ideal on external HDDS. maybe Exfat might be better."

Egads, no.
Use HFS+ instead (Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

 

[4sallypat]

Sorry I seems to have traced this to the sleep wake kernel panic issue with Big Sur.
But for what you are asking it’s a easystorage?by WD 10TB APFS formatted.

Does enabling the Terminal command: trimforce help with the sleep/wake of an external SSD or only internal ?

 

[aajeevlin]

Does enabling the Terminal command: trimforce help with the sleep/wake of an external SSD or only internal ?

Sorry, I think I might have confused you.

The issues was ultimately traced to "potentially" waking up from sleep state while connecting to HDMI screen. See the following links:

M1 Mac Mini - Kernel panics, perhaps due to HDMI

Hi, surprisingly it hasn't happened anymore. Boh 🤔 Until yesterday I still had the Acer connected to HDMI and the new BenQ to USB-C to DisplayPort. The kernel panics stopped even though nothing changed for the Acer. But I was still having issues with the displays not always waking up from sleep...

forums.macrumors.com

M1 Mac Mini (8/256) crashing while sleeping

forums.macrumors.com

I have since turned off the "sleep" for the Mac Mini (not for the monitor) and I have not experienced this issue again so far. I also bought the newest HDMI cable, since the one that I was using was from at least 10 years ago, so I'm going to use the new cable and reenable the sleep on the Mac Mini to see if the issues come back. Sorry if I didn't make this clear.

 

[nannasblackwhite]

Sorry, I think I might have confused you.

The issues was ultimately traced to "potentially" waking up from sleep state while connecting to HDMI screen. See the following links:

M1 Mac Mini - Kernel panics, perhaps due to HDMI

Hi, surprisingly it hasn't happened anymore. Boh 🤔 Until yesterday I still had the Acer connected to HDMI and the new BenQ to USB-C to DisplayPort. The kernel panics stopped even though nothing changed for the Acer. But I was still having issues with the displays not always waking up from sleep...

forums.macrumors.com

M1 Mac Mini (8/256) crashing while sleeping

forums.macrumors.com

I have since turned off the "sleep" for the Mac Mini (not for the monitor) and I have not experienced this issue again so far. I also bought the newest HDMI cable, since the one that I was using was from at least 10 years ago, so I'm going to use the new cable and reenable the sleep on the Mac Mini to see if the issues come back. Sorry if I didn't make this clear.

Did the new HDMI cable help? Are you still having issues?
I have reinstalled the MacOS and after still experiencing the issue Apple Support suggested to send the Mac Mini to service for diagnostics.

 

[aajeevlin]

Did the new HDMI cable help? Are you still having issues?
I have reinstalled the MacOS and after still experiencing the issue Apple Support suggested to send the Mac Mini to service for diagnostics.

No it did not help with the situation. I have since turn off the sleep for Mac Mini and I have not had a single issues since then. I mean not a single reboot or freeze.

 

[Wolver1ne]

No it did not help with the situation. I have since turn off the sleep for Mac Mini and I have not had a single issues since then. I mean not a single reboot or freeze.

Just came here to say this works. Running an external SSD on an 2017 iMac 27", and the issues stopped once I also disabled the sleep state. Thank you for the info!

 

[yellowhelicopter]

Yep, I also have issues with messages about kernel panic and forced reboot in the morning after I put my mini M1 to sleep in the evening, and I'm too using HDMI. It sleeps fine for some time while I'm watching it , but after some hours this always happens: panic(cpu X caller 0xfffffe002fccd828): initproc exited -- exit reason namespace 2 subcode 0xa description: none.

So, I had to opt not using sleep mode anymore. The machine works fine otherwise, it's the only problem with it and I think it can be easily fixed by software way.