NVME enclosure failing on me...

[Fishrrman]

"my drive is occasionally disconnecting... Not everyday, but a couple of times a week, during night period, while I put the Mac mini to sleep. What can I try?"

Option 1:
Eject and disconnect the drive at night.
Re-connect it in the morning.

Option 2:
Download the free (and tiny) menu bar app named "Semulov":

Release v2.6 · kainjow/Semulov

Fix Eject All keyboard shortcut not working Fix menubar button not highlighting correctly in newer macOS versions Experimental support for Apple Silicon Requires macOS 10.10 or greater

github.com

Then, use it.
Eject the drive at night, and then...
... re-mount it in the morning.

..

 

[zalle]

Oh, that sounds like a great idea... Not going to the bottom of the problem, but maybe just ignore it?

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"Not going to the bottom of the problem, but maybe just ignore it?"

Sometimes there IS NO "fix" to a problem.
It's just "there", it is what it is, and there isn't much one can do about it...
Except...
...to "work around" it.

Hence, my suggestions above.

You're far from being the only one to experience this glitch.
But the only entity that can "fix" this is... Apple.
Since this problem has been around for a while, and since Apple hasn't fixed it yet, I wouldn't expect a solution to be coming any time soon.

Thus, the need to workaround it.
The "Semulov solution" I offered above takes only a click of the mouse in the menu bar at night, and a follow-up click in the morning.

Is that really, really "too hard" to try...?

 

[zalle]

OP wrote:
"Not going to the bottom of the problem, but maybe just ignore it?"

Sometimes there IS NO "fix" to a problem.
It's just "there", it is what it is, and there isn't much one can do about it...
Except...
...to "work around" it.

Hence, my suggestions above.

You're far from being the only one to experience this glitch.
But the only entity that can "fix" this is... Apple.
Since this problem has been around for a while, and since Apple hasn't fixed it yet, I wouldn't expect a solution to be coming any time soon.

Thus, the need to workaround it.
The "Semulov solution" I offered above takes only a click of the mouse in the menu bar at night, and a follow-up click in the morning.

Is that really, really "too hard" to try...?

Maybe my words did not sound as expected. Now that I read it again it sounds I was being sarcastic, but I was not. It was a real question "just ignore it?". I installed Semulov, I've tried it, and will be using it. Look at the print screen, it's on!

Thanks for the time you took to help me, and sorry for the misunderstanding.

 

[bzgnyc2]

Guys, my drive is occasionally disconnecting... Not everyday, but a couple of times a week, during night period, while I put the Mac mini to sleep. What can I try? I don't think it's temperature related now.

Could it be the sleep process?

To some extent and based on others reports of their Macs under recent macOS, it's not clear our systems go to sleep the way they used to (i.e. it's more like deep sleep or REM sleep). Really in the end yours is an OS-level issue that Apple hasn't fixed and doesn't seem to happen with all hardware so not easy to track down/get fixed.

Your four options at this point are:
1) Workaround it by preemptively ejecting the drive as others have suggested
2) Try out firmware updates for the enclosure and/or NVMe
3) Tweak firmware settings (someone else got a USB3 vs USB4 issues resolved that way)
4) Try a different enclosure and/or NVMe