Catalina - External Hard Drives repeatedly ejected without cause.

Seriously, Apple? You sent out an update today without a fix for this hard drive issue? You should be ashamed of yourself.

I have a Lacie that I work from all day and since updating to Catalina, I have to unplug and replug it in multiple times each day.

Interestingly, I went on vacation and used that same hard drive with my Macbook Pro running Mohave and have no issues.

I tried to revert my iMac back to Mohave using the Time Machine external hard drive (oddly, not affected by Catalina) and the system tells me that it cannot revert.

And this happens to be a work computer that our tech support offers no help with, so I'm on my own with this. And clearly Apple doesn't want to touch this either.

Come on Apple, you're better than this.

I've come across yet another hard drive issue. Catalina is changing the path name on one of my external drives. The drive name is supposed to be "DATA 2", but in the path name it randomly changes to "DATA 2 1". Every time it happens, the programs that store their data on that drive report that they are unable to find the drive. Mostly this is Dropbox, Sync, and OneDrive. I'm downgrading to Mojave. Catalina is just not worth all the hassles. These are the sorts of issues I would expect from a beta, not a "mature" OS.

Thanks for the info on how to fix this issue, but I have now reverted all my Macs to Mojave. To me, the hard drive mounting issues with the "1"after them was just one of a long list of problems caused by macOS Catalina. Running that OS quite literally cost me thousands of dollars in lost productivity, and though it will take a while to get all my machines fully set up, going through that process is a preferable situation to random issues that can cripple my computers at any time, cause random restarts, eject hard drives while in the middle of a task (potentially crashing them), deal with video playing at hyperspeed, and the general slow and laggy performance that Catalina has.

Here is hoping that Big Sur doesn't suffer from similar problems.

given how buggy Catalina was and still is I hold my breath for BigSur being usable in the near future.

I paid 12 k for a new mac Pro 6 month ago and still can't keep all my external HD connected, will be going back to apple for a refund.

I am fortunate in one respect in that I can move all my machines to Mojave. With all of Apple's repeated engineering failures, I've held back on upgrading my machines. But, if Big Sur turns out to just be Catalina with a paint job, or there is more "Butterfly Keyboard" type nonsense, I will start the process of breaking away from the Apple ecosystem for good. I don't give two hoots how Big Sur looks; I really couldn't care less about cosmetic changes, and I don't care how thin my laptop is. My primary priority is hardware and an OS that are reliable, well designed, well made, and can be trusted; that's the reason I use Macs in the first place. I genuinely hope that Apple Silicon and Big Sur turn out to be everything we all hope for, but Apple's track record over the last 5 years or so has become so tarnished, I seriously doubt that they are up to the task. They have lofty dreams for where the Mac is headed; let's just hope they have what it takes to make them more than just a pipe dream, and we don't end up with another "Butterfly Keyboard" or "Airpower" type situation.

I unfortunately agree with you, using Mac since 1993, the past few years have been the worst since I use Mac, the dumming down of the system and apps, the usability issues with the OS and often poorly Quality Controlled OS releases have become a really problem. Since moving to the new 12.000$ Mac Pro and therefore Catalina I have spend more time trouble shooting than working. I return this machine now for a refund as the Money is just not justified and bought the last IMac and then will over the next year evaluate if I m move to a PC and Davinci resolve.

I also installed Mountain but still my USB C Drobo used for time machine back ups still ejects itself often when the machine goes to sleep

Just received my brand New 2020 iMac 5k quite a have few external drives

1 x Drobo D8 Thunderbolt 3

1 x Drobo 5D3 Thunderbolt 3

1 x Drobo 5D USB 3

1 x Pegasus R6 Thunderbolt 2 with a adapter to Thunderbolt 3

1 x Drobo 5c USB 3 used as Time Machine back up

System installed from scratch no migration only essentials installed.

Energy Saver - Put HD to sleep disabled, Power nap disabled

Mountain installed - Prevent Unmount enabled

Still Mac goes to sleep and ejects and re-connects random drives mainly USB 3 and Thunder bolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 drive

So damm Frustrating

Not too unusual, just look at the camera industry and batteries. Manufacturers batteries all contain chips that provide safety and additional information. You can get third party batteries for much less, but there can be issues too. Manufactures don’t have to warranty damage caused by third party accessories. So, the end user can pick the level of performance and safety/security they want.

I’m glad you got it resolved.

Glad this solution worked for you, but it hasn't for most of us because most of our drives are not thunderbolt drives. They are usb drives and we are using the original manufacturer's cables that came with them. Though appreciated, your comparison of "genuine" Apple products is immaterial to the situation caused by the Catalina update. Apple doesn't make a micro-b cable for me to use with my hard drive. (And yes, I've tried using a cable from another hard drive that didn't get kicked off by Catalina.)

Again, I'm glad you resolved your situation, but I don't want to give Apple the false impression that the issue is resolved.

so I just purchased a new OWC Thunderbolt 3 drive and it has the same issues, computer goes to sleep and every second or third time the drive will ejects itself which in return tells soft raid that a disk is missing asking to initialize the raid again. This is really ridicoulos

Hi oxmox11...I also bought a new OWC Thunderbolt 3 drive ( $1k) and it disconnects many times a day. This is on a brand new iMac that I bought a few months ago. Of course, there are no Apple stores open here in Las Vegas. They have all been closed and I sent the drive back to OWC and they told me it works fine on their end and they are sending it back to me. Seems to me that the two of them should have solved this by now. I feel like throwing my new system in the trash and going back to my 2009 Mac Pro that this iMac replaced as I can't work with the drive disconnecting and ruining my workflow. It's useless. Really disappointed in both of them. FWIW...https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2018/20180515_1850-RandomDisconnectionOfThunderboltDrives.html

This external ssd will disconnect while it's working. I can be streaming audio from it to mix a project and it will disconnect during the mix. When that happens everything comes to a halt. If I'm in Digital Performer at the time I can no longer "save" and I have to force quit the program. Same goes if I'm using the drive to stream samples. It's maddening. From what I can see they've been aware of the problem for a few years. I feel like I've been sold lemons. Not cool at all.

Yeah. Nearly $200 billion dollars in cash on hand, but Apple can't hire some extra programmers to find and fix software bugs, many of which have been in their software for close to a decade, or hire a hardware team that understands basic computer design concepts such as how to create a cooling system in a computer that actually works.

Pretty clear message about their priorities.

You're not the only one who has lost faith in Apple. Our household is a long term users of Apple products. We have multiple iPhones, Macs, iPads, and Apple Watches involved. But we have an embargo on the purchase of ANY Apple products, until the company proves that they have got their act together. Big Sur and iOS 14 are their last chances, when it comes to software. They mess those up, we are out. If they get them right, then they get two more years to prove what they have what it takes on the hardware side. They mess that up with another "Butterfly Keyboard" type situation, and we are also out.

The alternatives are now too good to ignore.

SoftRaid is the most buggy software I have to use. I regret the day I bought the OWC drive. I have spent hours on the phone with OWC support people and the multiple issues have never been resolved in over 1 ½ years.