Big Sur Disconnecting My External HDD

Here's something else that is probably related to the Mac Mini seeing the G-Drive as a Sandisk SSD. Before I disconnected everything, the G-Drive was connected along with an actual SanDisk Extreme PRO SSD (usb-c/a). The Sandisk was formatted HSFJ (Mac). I attempted to format the G-Drive. I labled it G-Drive so I could tell the 2 apart. It took a few attempts (because it kept disconnecting), but eventually it did format NTFS and the Sandisk extreme pro was also formatted at the same time.

Initially I thought I screwed up, but the G-Drive was labeled per the format, and I only formatted "1" drive, so how did both of them get formatted to NTFS at the same time...

This is crazy.

It appears that there is more than one issue causing external drives to disconnect which is of even more concern than if there were only one cause. This does seem to be a fundamental flaw in Big Sur which has been around since its first release nearly 7 months ago. It's time Apple fixed it.

I too have never installed antivirus on my Mac Mini M1 (and don't use hibernation because) and still have the problem.

I absolutely agree it's time for a fix - having an external hard drive is a core part of a computers functionality for many people!

Thank you for this.

I have just upgraded my photo Mac to Big Sur from Mojave which I've been using for years without a problem. The OWC RAID external drive I use to backup all my images hasn't had an issue until I did the upgrade. So I am trying your suggestion and in the meantime holding off moving to Big Sur on any other machine. I'm not overly keen on it anyway! Too many toys and not enough substance.

It’s very frustrating to see this issue has been occurring this long and is not resolved. It really sucks when all your music, photos and videos are kept on an external hard drive this affects. I guess the only solution is to buy a different slower external hard drive that’s powered independently of the computer?

same here. everything working fine till Big Sur came and blasted it all to ****. I have tried three external hard drives, kept my monitor on and screen saver with NO SLEEP as well as safe mode, disk utility clean up and every **** thing the multiple apple tech supporters have recommended. funny thing is they keep calling it my isolated incident and insist this is only happening to me. calling ********.

I need to back up my computer so I can totally wipe the Big Sur away and go back to Catalina. How the **** do I do that when I can't back up my computer?

Happening to me too - fortunately not 100s of times per day, but still totally unacceptable. 🤦🏻‍♂️

I'm on 11.1 but still have the same issues.

Thanks, will do!

Yes, I have had it happen during normal use also. I also have my mini set to never sleep anyway, so I don't think sleep is the whole answer.

For me it is only a USB connected HDD, a USB connected SSD has not disconnected.

I get this on my mac mini m1, external usb-c ssd and big sur 11.2 i cant explain it.

Just to add my external ssd is APFS formatted.