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Problem Samsung T5 and MacMini 2018

jdmc said:
It's conceivable that the phantom-unmounting problem could simply be the result of a crummy cable, no? Try getting a new, high-quality USB-C cable or two from a reputable source, and see what happens if you connect the drive using one of them instead.
Click to expand...

I've already tested with multiple cables, all of them supplied by Samsung with three T5 units I've purchased. No difference.

The problem only occurs during sleep. It works flawlessly when used and if you never sleep then it will stay mounted forever.
 
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Potato wrote:
"The problem only occurs during sleep. It works flawlessly when used and if you never sleep then it will stay mounted forever."

Once more, I'm going to offer my "Fishrrman's sounds like a broken record" advice.

If you have problems that seem to be "sleep related", the best solution is:
Never put the thing "to sleep".

Go to the energy saver pref pane and set computer sleep to "never".
Set "display sleep" wherever you wish.
UNcheck every other option below that.

Now, just "let it be".
The difference in power consumption between "idling" and "sleep" has become negligible with the introduction of all-SSD configurations. Just a couple of watts-per-hour. You're not gonna "save the environment" by using sleep vis-a-vis not using it.

At night, just shut it down, and reboot in the morning.
Nothing like "a fresh start" to clean out the cruft.

I even go further:
When I'm going to be away from the Mini for a few hours, I "reach forward" and TURN OFF my display.
When I sit back down, I reach forward once more to turn the display on, then click the mouse.
Everything "comes right back" as it should.

No "sleep problems" here.
 
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all day long yesterday I was getting eject errors on two different drives connected to 3.0 hub-- I was occasionally getting one or two of these a day. This time it was every couple of minutes. I changed the USB port from the first one to the second one (when facing the Mac Mini). Today there have been no disconnects. Somewhere else someone mentioned a similar issue with the first port
 
inmnbob said:
all day long yesterday I was getting eject errors on two different drives connected to 3.0 hub-- I was occasionally getting one or two of these a day. This time it was every couple of minutes. I changed the USB port from the first one to the second one (when facing the Mac Mini). Today there have been no disconnects. Somewhere else someone mentioned a similar issue with the first port
Click to expand...

My experience with this issue is directly connecting to the different USB ports on the 2018 mini. Both A and C ports show the same, consistent and reproducible behavior: sleeping overnight ejects the drive and results in the "not properly ejected" message.

I've tried different power settings, different cables, different SSD drives (though all Samsung T5 1TB).

I'm going to start playing with formatting/encryption to see if that applies. APFS/Encrypted reproduces it. Tonight, I'll reformat to unencrypted and see if it persists.
 
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ElectricPotato said:
I'm going to start playing with formatting/encryption to see if that applies. APFS/Encrypted reproduces it. Tonight, I'll reformat to unencrypted and see if it persists.
Click to expand...

Removing encryption changed the behavior. The "not properly ejected" message still appears, but the drive was still mounted or automatically remounted on wake.

External drive behavior when mini sleeping overnight:
APFS/encrypted = not properly ejected message, drive ejected but visible/mountable via diskutil
APFS/unencrypted = not properly ejected message, drive still mounted or automatically remounted

The system has the drive password in the keychain so this is not a matter of requiring a password on wake. The drive mounts automatically without problem on fresh boot. The problem is the behavior when sleeping overnight.

Tonight, I'll try HFS+/unencrypted.
 
That would be necessary only if someone is using Samsung's activation software, though, right? When I have purchased a T5, first thing I do is to reformat it to APFS and to eliminate the special software that Samsung includes, as I don't need it for my purposes. I have never had any issues with any of my T- series of external SSDs, and I've been using them since the T1. That said, I do not "sleep" my computer, I shut it down at night and I also do not keep my T5 drives plugged into the machine all the time. I just plug in when needed.
 
Clix Pix said:
That would be necessary only if someone is using Samsung's activation software, though, right?
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. A SSD as any hard drive requires a firmware, otherwise it wouldn't work. If there's a bug or compatibility issue in the firmware, a newer version could fix the problem. I'm not saying this is the case, but at least it's a possibility.

It's never wrong to update to the latest version. There wouldn't be a newer version if they didn't improve something. Worth a try, but create a backup of the drive before applying the update.
 
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Clix Pix said:
That would be necessary only if someone is using Samsung's activation software, though, right?
Click to expand...

The "activation software" updates the internal drive firmware if needed. The only other thing the software does is enable/disable drive level passwords, which I do not use. There are no other drive settings/options. I just now installed and ran it and it updated the drive firmware from MVT42P1Q_0406_010600 to MVT42P1Q_0406_010602. I will see if this has any effect tonight.

It may be the people not experiencing the issue do not sleep overnight, which is the only thing that consistently reproduces the ejection problem for me. But, having the latest drive firmware is also a good test.
 
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ElectricPotato said:
I just now installed and ran it and it updated the drive firmware from MVT42P1Q_0406_010600 to MVT42P1Q_0406_010602. I will see if this has any effect tonight.
Click to expand...

No change. APFS/encrypted with the latest firmware still ejects when sleeping overnight.

I'll try out HFS+/unencrypted tonight to see what that does. Then I'm out of things to try. I'm guessing this regression is something that must be worked around (manual unmount/mount when sleeping or don't sleep).
 
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Well, I have to walk back my earlier comment. I’m starting to see the same issue occasionally, maybe on every fifth wake from sleep.

My T5 uses exFat (used cross platform), is unencrypted and connected via USB-C. The drive is mounted just fine without any delay when waking the Mac Mini. Wihout the notification I wouldn’t suspect any problem.
 
thirdsun said:
I’m starting to see the same issue occasionally, maybe on every fifth wake from sleep.
Click to expand...

Very interesting. That adds another good data point to what I've seen. When I turned off encryption, I saw the ejection warning but the drive remained mounted or automatically remounted on wake. With encryption the warning occurs and the drive is unmounted on wake.

So it appears turning on/off encryption alters the behavior but disk format (APFS vs ExFAT) does not. The warning occurs regardless.

I reproduce the issue every time when sleeping overnight but not on short sleeps. How long is your machine sleeping?
 
So far I have not encountered this issue, which I was aware off from previous reports. My setup:

- Mac Mini is always on, sleeps during night
- 2 Akitio USB-C dual 2.5" RAID enclosures with SSD & HD's connected to 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports
- 1 external Seagate Backup Plus Portable 5TB connected to an USB port
- SP Energy Saver settings:
"Turn display off after:" 15 min
"Put hard disks to sleep when possible" -> OFF
"Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" -> ON
"Enable Power Nap" -> ON
 
ElectricPotato said:
Very interesting. That adds another good data point to what I've seen. When I turned off encryption, I saw the ejection warning but the drive remained mounted or automatically remounted on wake. With encryption the warning occurs and the drive is unmounted on wake.

So it appears turning on/off encryption alters the behavior but disk format (APFS vs ExFAT) does not. The warning occurs regardless.

I reproduce the issue every time when sleeping overnight but not on short sleeps. How long is your machine sleeping?
Click to expand...

To be honest I didn’t notice whether length of sleep has any influence. Since I see the problem only rarely, it may very well be the case. Have to observe it in the next days.
 
Any updates? I’m looking at getting the T5 soon to use with my mini.

Also are people connecting via USB A or USB C
 
Alwis said:
Hi,

I have the 2018 MacMini, i7, 32GB 512GB SSD. Via USB-C a 1TB Samsung T5 is connected (formatted as APFS).

This worked without any problems, but after waking up the Mini from Sleep I got dozens of Notifications, that the Samsung external drive has not been properly ejected before sleep.

Why this? I am working with external drives on my iMac for ages and hd never any issues after waking up the iMac from sleep... Is this a known problem with the T5?

Thanks for your help!

Alwis
Click to expand...
Verify the cable you are using and re-check.

Personally I have had this issue multiple times when a cable.

Exact same issue with this exact same setup. In this case, for me, I swapped to a different USB-C cable 2 weeks ago and have not had a single ejected external drive issue since.
 
ElectricPotato said:
Very interesting. That adds another good data point to what I've seen. When I turned off encryption, I saw the ejection warning but the drive remained mounted or automatically remounted on wake. With encryption the warning occurs and the drive is unmounted on wake.

So it appears turning on/off encryption alters the behavior but disk format (APFS vs ExFAT) does not. The warning occurs regardless.

I reproduce the issue every time when sleeping overnight but not on short sleeps. How long is your machine sleeping?
Click to expand...

Quick update: I see no pattern at all. I rarely see the notification and it doesn’t seem to depend on the length of the sleep cycle at all.
I see it as a non-issue now.
 
Jorbanead said:
Any updates? I’m looking at getting the T5 soon to use with my mini.

Also are people connecting via USB A or USB C
Click to expand...

No updates here. I can reproduce it every attempt by sleeping overnight, like clockwork. This is on different ports (both A and C), with different cables, with different T5 drives, with the latest T5 firmware, with the latest macOS, with different power settings, with different encryption settings, with different drive formats.

I gave up and accept that I can't sleep overnight with the T5 still mounted. I either shut down completely overnight or manually unmount before sleeping overnight. Apart from this one quirk, the drive performs flawlessly.
 
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Jorbanead said:
Any updates? I’m looking at getting the T5 soon to use with my mini.
Click to expand...

I've had a sort of breakthrough. I tested the same T5 drive and USB cable on a 13" MBP 2018 (plugged into USB-C/macOS 10.14.2) while sleeping overnight: the drive stayed mounted.

I then moved the Mac Mini 2018 from the living room (connected to 4K Sony TV) to the office (connected to HP monitor) for more testing. For the first time, the mini slept all night and the T5 stayed mounted!

I can reproduce the "improperly ejected" message every time with the mini connected to the TV and sleeping overnight. The exact same physical setup, except the different monitor, fixes the problem. Both monitors were connected through the HDMI connector on the mini.

After testing over many nights and reproducing it every time I was surprised that changing monitors (and nothing else) fixes a drive mounting issue. There were no problems with the mini sleeping. It woke just fine. The only issue was the external drive being ejected during sleep, and ONLY when connected to the TV.

I'm a technical guy (EE/write device drivers/hardware design) but this baffles me. I see no obvious connection between the monitor and external drive mounting. I assume there is some weird confluence of power management/device management/OS that creates this dependency.
 
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May I ask if using the USB A port gives you the same write speed as the C port?

I’m in the process of picking an external drive and it seems to be either the T5 or the cheaper MX500.

Also, slightly off topic but does anyone know if there’s m.2 enclosures that support both SATA m.2 and NVMe, since the connection pins are different? I’d like to start with a SATA until the NVMe become more affordable.
 
nampramos said:
May I ask if using the USB A port gives you the same write speed as the C port?
Click to expand...

Plugging the T5 into a USB-A port on the 2018 mini reports the same USB 3.1, 10Gbps in the macOS system report as the USB-C ports. I did not run benchmarks but it appears the speed is the same regardless of the physical connector.
 
Thank you. If by any chance you (or someone else) could perform a speed test, that would be interesting to know. Thank you in advance.

I know the T5 is a solid drive but the m.2 form factor is considerably smaller/lighter so I’m torn between the T5 and a SATA m.2 stick and enclosure. Price wise is about the same.
 
That was quick! Much appreciated, thank you!

I’m a bit reluctant to accept usb-c just yet, especially for an external portable drive, so good to know both types perform equal on the mini.

Now I only need to decide on which drive or enclosure to get.
 
A final note on this. After determining the problem only occurs when the mini is connected to a Sony TV, I went over all the TV settings and turned off HDMI CEC (consumer electronic control). This feature allows limited control of attached devices through HDMI and is branded Bravia Sync on Sony TVs. With HDMI CEC disabled on the TV, the external drive mounting issue went away.

Macs do not support HDMI CEC, as posted on Apple support. Clearly Macs can be affected by HDMI CEC even if they do not support it and this effect can happen when the Mac is sleeping. It seems likely unexpected activity on video connections can disrupt macOS power management with a subsequent effect on other devices. That could explain the inconsistent and intermittent nature of many "improperly ejected" messages related to sleeping Macs.

For those still experiencing this issue: try a different monitor, monitor cable or review the monitor settings. As odd as it seems, it can (and in my case definitely did) affect the mount state of an external drive.
 
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