External drive issues on Catalina

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Level 1

8 points

External drive issues on Catalina

I work off external hard drives exclusively and have since being a mac user. Mojave presented a number of issues and failures with the proper functions of the ehds. I spent a lot of time troubleshooting with apple support providing details for their engineers. We found a work around to format to mac os journaled on all of them. They worked normally...

Until I upgraded to Catalina. I upgraded because I was having random unexplained shutdowns. Unfortunately the external drive issues have returned and apple phone support has been unhelpful. We have tried the reset SMC and I was asked not to reset NVRAM due to the unexplained shutdowns (for now)...

Example issues:

Timeshare backs up to an EHD, works normally, then suddenly after varied amounts of time from a few hours to all day, it will alert me to a failed back up. I will try to eject the drive and it will show failed to eject and want me to force eject (which I try not to do). The drive is not open or working anywhere else. I have to restart the mac completely, then I can eject and re-mount and it will start the whole cycle again. It's like the drive is no longer recognized.

My working ehd does the same thing. You can use it normally then after a varied period of time, it will suddenly not save anything to it, or show previews of images on the drive, and refuse to eject.

Apple Phone support has not been helpful across numerous calls. It's not the drive(s), the cords are fine, the drives are not failing, we've been through all of that. If you have suggestions other than the usual resets, safe mode, etc... I would love to know.

If you have this problem too, I hope you will mention it.

MacBook Pro 15”, macOS 10.15

Posted on Feb 8, 2020 9:44 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 8, 2020 1:37 PM in response to mrstank

It seems like you are having two issues here which may possibly be related.

For the unexplained shutdowns, please run EtreCheck and allow it "Full Disk Access" so it will also include summaries of the most recent system logs which may provide valuable clues. Post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

Are your external drive Thunderbolt or USB drives?

If Thunderbolt, are they daisy chained together?

How many external drives are connected at one time?

Try connecting only a single drive to see if the issue still occurs.

Are you using a USB hub with them? If so, try connecting the drives directly to your Mac. I find a lot of USB hubs are very poorly made.

If you are not using a USB hub, then get a powered USB3 hub with UASP support to see if it helps. Besides providing extra power to the drives the hub can also act like a buffer between them and the computer. I have to have a hub as a buffer for my system or I have issues.

Also try using the computer in Safe Mode to see whether you still get the unexpected shutdowns and the drive disconnects. If you've been in contact with Apple, then I assume you have already performed an SMC reset and PRAM resets. Have they also had you perform a clean reinstall of macOS without migrating or restoring from a backup?

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Answer 2

Feb 8, 2020 6:46 PM in response to mrstank

It is very possible this is another Catalina issue, but the fact you had similar issues before Catalina makes me wonder about the computer, installed software, or one or more of the connected devices. It seems you are running a bit more of a complex setup than many users so this just makes it more likely of some weird compatibility issue arising.

Unfortunately you must use the APFS file system on the boot drive for Catalina, but your external drives should all be formatted as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled) not that this should have much bearing on your current situation.

If you do perform a clean reinstall of macOS for testing just make sure to select the physical drive to erase. Within Disk Utility you will need to click on "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the physical drive will appear in the left pane of Disk Utility. The physical drive should be listed as something like "Apple SSD....", "Apple HDD .....", or in the case of a Fusion Drive setup the base should be something like "Fusion Drive".

I wish you luck.

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Answer 3

mrstank Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 8, 2020 10:50 PM in response to HWTech

It happened at the beginning of Mojave... no issues prior to that, so this is an inherited issue IMO. Nothing to do with software, we did a partition to check. But that's the typical response I get. It must be your fault, your equipment, your software but hours and hours on the phone with tech support and humoring them along every step of the way. The work around was great and doing well until the upgrade of Catalina. That was the only change. They even exchanged the computer at the start of all of it.

My system is super simple. Nothing complex which is why I only connect directly to the mbp with a usb-c device to be sure it's not a compatibility issue. My base everyday set up is a simple laptop with a power cord and a usb-c passport. Sometimes I add an external monitor but that doesn't change anything. And my 2nd passport is for timeshare backups of the main harddrive and the external, so it really couldn't get any simpler. No extra software or random stuff on the machine.

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Answer 4

mrstank Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 8, 2020 6:15 PM in response to HWTech

USBC drives and a few older USB drives.

I use two primarily, one working USBC and one timeshare USBC.

I have checked the issue and it does occur on the other drives as well. One powered USB hub and one of the smaller USB docks, but these have both been ruled out as the issue as has the drives themselves and their cords.

Yes, all the resets and clean installs have been done this time around. The next step at this point is to wipe the machine and try again from scratch but since I suspect Catalina is directly to blame, I doubt that will help. When this happened with Mojave, we went through months of in depth testing/diagnosing and my case was sent to the engineers. It was determined the work around was the reformat to mac OS journaled. The drives worked perfectly after that until this upgrade to Catalina.

I can't get back to my original case holder who spent all that time on the issue because what apple support should do is take it up from there but the calls I've made have led to the same things mentioned here over and over and at times they treat me very negatively. I just really need to get back to a working situation so I don't have to stop in the middle of my work and restart to keep the devices properly connected. That is why I am looking for others who may have had the issue and what might resolve it once and for all.

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External drive issues on Catalina

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