External drives keep dismounting

[LoudBassTone]

Hello. Anybody using Monterey having random dismounting of external drives? Seems there is a lot of chatter about this outside the forum.

[bradch00]

Originally Posted by LoudBassTone

Hello. Anybody using Monterey having random dismounting of external drives? Seems there is a lot of chatter about this outside the forum.

Funny you should mention this. For the first time since configuring my Mac Studio both my USB connected spinning disks dismounted for no apparent reason. Shutdown and powered everything off, reseated (fancy word for "wiggled") all cables. Powered on and since yesterday, all good. First time since April I have had any issue and the machine is on most of the day, everyday.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by bradch00

Funny you should mention this. For the first time since configuring my Mac Studio both my USB connected spinning disks dismounted for no apparent reason. Shutdown and powered everything off, reseated (fancy word for "wiggled") all cables. Powered on and since yesterday, all good. First time since April I have had any issue and the machine is on most of the day, everyday.

Mac Studios have reported that issue (I believe it's the rear ports that are most problematic) but he's on an older machine.

[bradch00]

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

Mac Studios have reported that issue (I believe it's the rear ports that are most problematic) but he's on an older machine.

It is the rear ports I have them connected to. There days are numbered as I am moving all storage to Thunderbolt. Hopefully no issues there.

[LoudBassTone]

I mention this as my sister is a designer, Adobe cloud apps, and we moved her 2 spinner drives to a newest 3.5/2.5 OWC USB C, have to recheck this, drive case, nicknamed “The Toaster”. The plan is to move to 2 SSDs. So after her panic call, Google, Apple dev forum and wow everyone is pointing the finger. Yes they all turn off any power saving monitor sleeping, wiggles their cables checked their wall warts. Seems that in the end others experienced this in Big Sur, too. A lot of reading, one person claims buying a Cal Bit for TB4 powered dock solved his issues.

With everyone getting new M1 and Mac Studios I was surprised not to hear any rumbling about this, yet. Seems after testing attaching to Windows machines to see if their externals are faulty, Popular opinion it is the OSX. I have a Trash can use an OWC dock, thunderbolt cage for 4 SSDs, an assortment of mac journaled, apfs, total of 9 drives on Monty 12.5.1. So far have not seen this random dismounting feature.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by bradch00

It is the rear ports I have them connected to. There days are numbered as I am moving all storage to Thunderbolt. Hopefully no issues there.

I believe the issue has been fixed via software but don't quote me on that.

[LoudBassTone]

Do you mean osx 12.5.1? Or firmware for drives?

UPDATE: The OWC case even ejected the drives on cheesegrater Mojave, when formatting an SSD in a singles case. Cheesegrater has a USB 3.0 card from Sonnetech Allergo USB 3.2. Trying to narrow down if this is an issue. https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-...ro-quad/raid-5. No raid software just running single drives.

[gthm]

I had a few dismounts in 2022.6 with my Samsung T7s.

I switched to 2022.7 and Thunderbolt/USB 4 drives and no dismounts so far.

Must say, kinda scary these dismounts! Glad they're gone.

[rampartthemovie]

thunderbolt 4/3 seems to not be affected. reports are mostly the external ssd's using usb3(whatever gen its under), dont know about usb4. i only use thunderbolt anyway with my mac

[LoudBassTone]

Thanks for the info. I believe a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 Dock is on the way to get more variety of ports and a 4 space Thunderbolt cage to hold the SSD drives.