M1 Compatibility Issue? External Drive is Unreadable / Causes Hard Crashes

That depends entirely upon whose issue it is.

I've been here long enough to remember the Oxford 922 FireWire bridge chip issue well.

I know there have been reports that the JMicron JMS583 had issues even with Catalina on Intel Macs:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251444511?answerId=252813217022#252813217022

m010726 wrote:

I really just need to get this drive working on my new M1 MacBook Pro so that I can edit PRORES video on location. That's mainly the only reason I bought this Mac.

So why take a chance with a brand new architecture? What you describe has happened, almost verbatim, with every new Mac over the past 20 years. It will take a couple of years for 3rd party vendors to develop compatible equipment.

m010726 wrote:

That's not a productive response. Both Apple and the 3rd Party manufacturers claim TB3 compatibility, and as I mentioned the drive also fails to read properly with a USB-C enclosure. Neither USB-C nor TB3 are new 'architecture', and I'm fairly confident that Apple tested M1 for both. If you have information about how this case may have slipped through the cracks or what I may have missed in my troubleshooting, then please be useful and provide it.

What sort of “information” could I possibly have other than 30 years of buying Macintosh computers? Maybe I’ll just put the question back to you. What information do you have from either Apple or Sabrent guaranteeing compatibility with the other company’s products, especially via multiple 3rd party enclosures from yet another set of companies?

You said you purchased this computer to “edit PRORES video on location”. That sounds an awful lot like a work task, not a consumer task. You are well on your way to collecting your own years of experience balancing technological changes with conflicting business requirements. Sometimes those lessons hurt.

What do you expect me to tell you? “Oh, here’s the magic M1 kernel boot arguments to enable that device!” Those kinds of things only happen on the internet and are totally fake. You could try buying an OWC card to use with the enclosure. Such a configuration would be more likely to work. And if it didn’t, OWC would be more understanding and more interested to fix it. They couldn’t fix the devices you had purchased, of course. I mean they would be willing to consider fixing it for new customers by late 2021. Sabrent couldn’t care less about it. Apple would be happy to get your bug report. People who buy new M1 Macs in early 2022 would probably enjoy greater compatibility then. You could buy devices from major manufacturers like Samsung. I don’t think the T7 comes any larger than 2 TB, but there is a good chance that Apple actually tested with that.

There. Is that a more “productive” response? I don’t think so. Internet tech support forums are poor venues for problems that can only be solved by going back in time and making a different choice.

m010726 wrote:

I've been using Macs and PCs for decades as well, but that doesn't make me right about anything.

Your response is not welcome because you're not offering any information relevant to this case or my troubleshooting method. Your comments about alternative untested hardware solutions and future compatibility are pure conjecture.

Please refrain from commenting further.

If anyone else has had similar situations with the M1 Macs crashing on TB3 connections or failure to read USB-C external drives, then please share your experience so that we can figure this out together.

Call Customer Support (800) MY–APPLE (800–692–7753)

or on line https://getsupport.apple.com/

or call AppleCare Support at 1-800-APLCARE (800-275-2273)

The obvious question is if you've contacted OWC about this.

They have a vested interest in making their product work and have the staff on-hand that analyzes this type of issue every day as it's their business and they specifically claim it will work.

OWC Customer Support

There are all sorts of issues, usually involving timing, that could be at play here.

Regardless, since it's their interface and they claim it's fully compatible, it's OWC's issue to solve as you should be able to connect any compliant device to their interface to have it talk to your M1.

If it really is the SSD, I'm sure OWC would love to know that as well.

I'm having the same issue with my pluggable USB M2 enclosure. Works perfectly on my 2017 MBP, but hard crashes on my my new M1 MBP. I have multiple different M2 drives, but only the one pluggable enclosure. The issue happens with all drives. there appears to be an M1 MBP USB issue

its not a Pluggable issue, the enclosure works on my other three intel based MBP without an issue, only the M1 chipped MBP has the problem. When the drives aren't formatted in APFS, the Pluggable enclosure also works flawlessly with my various Win/Linux desktops.

Perhaps, perhaps not.

The M1 may be using newer portions of the spec that the enclosure is supposed to be backwards compatible with but isn't actually.

In either case, it wouldn't hurt Pluggable to know as, should it be a bug, they can put more pressure on Apple to fix bugs than individual users can.