hard drive keeps unmounting, and TM still encrypting after a month

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hard drive keeps unmounting, and TM still encrypting after a month

I got a new 12TB WD Elements hard drive about a month and half ago and I set it up as my Time Machine drive with my Mac Mini, and since then I've had intermittent issues with it un-mounting on its own. At first it would un-mount on its own and also automatically re-mount as well (the only reason I knew that it un-mounted was because of the multiple notifications "disk was not ejected properly" that I would find on my screen when I'd wake up the display), but the last couple times it hasn't re-mounted. In fact, it didn't even show up in Disk Utility until I unplugged and replugged the USB cable. Unplugging and replugging the drive's power didn't seem to help.

I tried running First Aid on the hard drive ("logical volume"), but it said "First Aid process has failed. If possible back up the data on this volume." Then I tried running First Aid on the parent "WD Elements 25A3 Media" drive (in the left side bar, my hard drive's name is under this), and it said there was corruption that needed to be repaired, and to run first aid from recovery. I haven't tried this yet though because the drive has been encrypting for the last 1.5 months and I'm scare it will start over. By the way, is it normal for Time Machine to take over a month to encrypt a 12TB drive (only about 1.5TB is actually being used though)? I started in mid October and it's the end of November and it's only at around 80%.

The drive is plugged directly into my Mac Mini. I have two other external hard drives also plugged directly into the Mini, but which do not have this problem. I'm going to try switching the USB port with another drive and see if it un-mounts after awhile again. But in the meantime, any thoughts would be appreciated. Is it just a defective drive? If I get a new drive, is there any way I can avoid another 2 months of encrypting?

One more bit of info- I've had issues with other hard drives un-mounting from this Mac Mini before. It was years ago though so I don't remember how often it happened or which drives they were. But just thought I'd throw that in there.

I appreciate any help!

2014 Mac Mini (I chose "mac mini 2018 or later" in the options, but only because there was no older Mac Mini option; mine is a 2014.)

Mojave 10.14.6

Mac mini 2018 or later

Posted on Nov 29, 2020 9:37 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 14, 2020 7:32 PM in response to oregonjoe

My gut says its the device itself. Either the PSU or the interface logic. Ive seen this happen with Lacie, as well as Seagate external drives.

I think if it were specific to the computer then the other drives would exhibit this same behavior. I will assume you've tried swapping USB3 ports, etc.

PS - With regard to encryption, 1.5TB shouldn't take that long to encrypt. Maybe 2-3 days if that's all the Mac Mini is doing.

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Answer 2

oregonjoe Author

Level 1

120 points

Nov 30, 2020 2:07 PM in response to BDAqua

The 12TB WD Elements drive has its own AC power. One other drive (4TB MyBook) does as well. A third drive (4TB seagate) is a portable bus-powered hard drive.

The 2014 Mac mini and all the drives are USB3.

Thanks.

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Answer 3

oregonjoe Author

Level 1

120 points

Dec 14, 2020 6:14 PM in response to BDAqua

Sorry, things have been very hectic recently. I appreciate your response.

What ended up happening was since First Aid was failing on the drive, I thought the drive hardware was just faulty. So before returning it, I decided to give it one last shot by reformatting and starting over with Time Machine backups, and I don’t know why but that seems to have fixed everything. No more un-mounting (so far), first aid runs successfully, and one other bit of info I didn’t realize before—the drive would constantly be making “working” noises even though no Time Machine backup was running and even though the TM encryption process had finished, but this seems to have been fixed too.

I don’t know why this happened, except that maybe I somehow formatted the drive incorrectly the first time, though I don’t think so.

And I’m still not exactly sure why it took 2 months to encrypt the drive the first time, but this time when I formatted it, I made sure it was encrypted (mac OS extended journaled encrypted), and this time there was no TM “encrypting” process. I guess I didn’t choose encrypted when formatting the first time. Maybe this all somehow tied into drive getting messed up the first time, though I don’t see how.

In any case, all seems to be well. Thanks!

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Nov 30, 2020 1:52 PM in response to oregonjoe

Are these Bus driven Drives without their own AC power?

USB, USB2, USB3, USB-C ???

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Nov 30, 2020 2:14 PM in response to oregonjoe

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode?

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

You can save us asking dozens of questions by submitting a report from this App for us to look at…

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Pastebin is a good place to paste the whole report if you capture the URL while there…

https://pastebin.com/

Whew, they've changed pastebin & made it harder, but after pasting in, click Create new paste button, then Embed button, then copy the URL...

The important part is...

https://pastebin.com/embed_js/KuvnghqA

Workable but harder for me to work with...the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck. In a Reply before you click post, look for this to add longer texts...

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Answer 6

oregonjoe Author

Level 1

120 points

Dec 14, 2020 10:40 PM in response to modernkaos

Thanks. Yes, I’d say it was definitely not an issue with the Mac Mini since two other external drives are doing fine.

I did swap USB3 ports with a second external hard drive connected to the Mac Mini, and the results were pretty inconclusive. The un-mounting problem did seem to stop after that, but it couldn’t have been an issue with the ports because the second hard drive didn’t exhibit problems with either port. Also switching ports didn’t resolve the issue with First Aid failing, or the constant working noise, which again points to the drive being the issue.

Yeah I knew 2 months to encrypt the drive couldn’t be right, even if it’s 12TB capacity.

I’m inclined to believe whatever caused the slow encryption and the constant noise and the failed First Aid is connected since reformatting and starting over seemed to solve all three of those. I have until the end of the month to return the drive, so if it continues to work properly and if it runs a successful First Aid at that point, I think it should be safe enough to keep.

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hard drive keeps unmounting, and TM still encrypting after a month

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