External SSD Disconnects Repeatedly Mac Mini M1 (Big Sur)

I think my issue is resolved. Its been a couple of weeks with no disconnects due, I believe, to de-selecting "Put Hard Drives to Sleep" under System Preferences/Energy Saver selections. I was reading elsewhere that some people were having different sleep/wake issues, so thought I'd try this selection to see if it would make a difference, and it seems to be the answer so far.

Sleeping HDD was never a problem with Catalina on my old iMac (even though using SSD), so I didn't think it would be any different with Big Sur and M1 Mini (and it doesn't affect the Mini's SSD), but apparently it may* be the cause of the disconnects I was having with external drives.

*I will report if the problem recurs.

I'm having the same issue. Mini M1, 256GB, 16GB memory, Big Sur 11.1

I have two external drives, one 500GB HDD in a bus-powered enclosure and the other a 1TB HDD in self powered enclosure. Both are set up as Time Machine backup drives and will randomly, separately, repeatedly and inexplicably cause "Disk Not Ejected Properly" warnings. As long as they are plugged in, they will reappear on the desktop - even if I properly eject them. Sometimes hours will pass without the issue, but then it occurs. Seems not to have any ill effects that I've noticed.

I can't correlate this symptom to anything specific. I have switched ports, cables, etc. but seems to make no difference. Both drives and cables have been used on a previous Mac without issues and I have run First Aid as well without issues.

Maybe it has something to do with Time Machine. I have another external drive that I use for non-system file storage (music, photos, documents, etc.) and it has never had this issue.

Hopefully, there will be a reason and solution?

Unfortunately, just because it works in Big Sur on intel, does not mean it works with Big Sur on M1. I have both platforms as well and on Mac Mini M1 it has problems. It may very well be because of code for external devices on the M1 that is necessarily different than on Intel since they are different processors.

Solved for me:

I had this problem constantly on my 2020 Mac M1 Mini. This same SSD was plugged into my Windows laptop problem free for a year. Often when idle but also at other times, the popup of disk ejected improperly would come up. I disabled power saving, I ran an app to keep it alive, nothing was working. Then I bought a super short thunderbolt 3 cable and I have not had a problem since, it has been nearly a week.

I had even bought an expensive Caldigit Elements powered thunderbolt 4 hub and the problem had been coming up, it only went away with this cable swap.

Hopefully this helps someone as the problem is incredibly annoying!

Adam

I have been having similar issues and have been working hard at trying to get a resolution. For the record, I began with a Sabrent Rocket 4+ 2TB SSD and a Trebleet TB3 enclosure. Doing the install was a piece of cake initially. I wanted to move about 1.4TB of raw image files from an old WD Passport 4TB HDD over to the Sabrent. I was using a brand new M1 MacBook Air and had it connected up to an OWC TB4 hub. So I began with the SSD and the WD connected through the OWC hub. The Sabrent appeared just fine in Disk Utility, I formatted it as APFS and began the transfer. That started up and I went away to do something else while it completed.

That was the start of my problems. I came back an hour or two later to find that the Sabrent had gone off-line and could not be reconnected at all. I assumed that the drive had died in its infancy. It was virtually impossible to contact Sabrent support, but I did get hold of Trebleet; and they have been amazing.

I can summarize my experience so far by observing that the Trebleet is using a JMicron controller, and per other reports, this seems to have issues with the Sabrent Rocket 4+. I have also put the Sabrent SSD into a Sabrent Type-C tool-free enclosure and this works somewhat better. The Trebleet will disconnect during even small file transfers with connections to Win10 PCs, Parallels running on Intel Macs, and either Intel or M1 Macs (I have a few). Formatting as APFS, NTFS, or plain old Mac files doesn't seem to make a difference. With the Rocket 4+ in the Sabrent enclosure, it will work flawlessly connected to the OWC hub; but very frequently, it will be unrecognizable when connected to my M1 MacBook Air directly. It does not seem to matter whether the connection is via a USB-C, TB3 or TB4 cable.

Typically, when there is a failure, the enclosure electronics will be sensed and appear in the SysInfo TB or USB tree. The internal controller (say the JMicron) will show up but the SSD is not detected.

After a disconnect during a folder transfer with the Trebleet enclosure, I can take the Sabrent Rocket SSD and place it into the Sabrent enclosure, and the SSD will show up as a healthy file system and only those specific files that were in process at the time of the disconnect will be lost or damaged.

As I say, the Trebleet people have been very helpful in debugging so far. They have provided me with firmware upgrade tools to get the latest F/W into the enclosure; unfortunately, so far this remains a problem. As it stands, I can get the Rocket SSD to function consistently when installed in the Sabrent enclosure and connected by USB-C to the OWC hub and that connected by TB4 to my M1 MacBook. Also unfortunately, this is not the fastest connection and speed tests show reads and writes at just over 600MB/s.

I find it bizarre that I can get proper functionality with the Sabrent SSD in the Sabrent enclosure when it's connected through the OWC hub but not when it's connected directly to the MacBook.

In the case of the Trebleet enclosure, it is sensitive to physical connection to the M1 in the following way. The first time it is connected directly, its connection LED will not light up and it will not show up on the SysInfo tree. However, disconnecting the cable and reconnecting it, sometimes with a cable inversion, will get it to connect. It is as if the JMicron needs to be hit twice before it will go active.

I have tried both the Sabrent enclosure and the Trebleet on a Dell Win10 PC, an i5 iMac (Catalina) with and without Parallels (v16) running Win10, and my M1 MacBook Air (Big Sur) with and without the OWC TB4 hub. Best performance is with the hub and with the Sabrent enclosure.

I've ordered an OWC Envoy TB3 enclosure to try it out as well.

In summary, all I can add is that there is a significant mine-field of performance issues associated with matching SSDs to bare enclosures. Trebleet seems to be working hard on a resolution and others have reported no issues using Sabrent Rocket 4+ 1TB SSDs in their enclosure. Even though it's more expensive, it may be a more conservative route to match SSD and enclosure manufacturer or buy a pre-installed unit from a single source.

If I had to do this all over again, I'd be really tempted to go that route.

For me this issues also occurring on a M1 max 16" MacBook Pro using corsair X8 usb-c ssd. Often occurring in the middle of a time machine backup which isn't great. I've found a weird work around which seems to work. In battery preferences for both on mains and battery turn off 'Put hard disk to sleep when possible' and then use a usb C to A dongle and then a usb c to a lead to connect the drive. Not had the issue since. Have logged it with support as well. Issue occurs in Monterey 12.3 so definitely not fixed. I suspect the o.s is powering the drive down even in use, that and something weird with the power management to the thunderbolt ports when using certain usb-c 3.1 devices. Hope my weird work around can help a few people out.

FWIW

I have a LG UltraFine TB3 5K monitor and a Nestor TB3 NVME SSD enclosure with a 2TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus SSD on my M1 Mac Mini (8GB/512GB). I first had the Nestor daisy chained off the LG Monitor on the right (from back) TB4 port. Things seem to work well. Then I ran some Black Magic speed tests and noticed I was only getting 800GB/s writes when it should be able to go much faster. I shuffled connections, put the Nestor alone on the left TB4 port and kept the monitor on the right port. With the Nestor on it's own port, I got 1300+GB/s writes - not a bad speed bump for just a reconfiguration. But then over the next couple of days I started to experience random disconnects of the SSD, not tied to any particular application or action. I have my photos library on the SSD so it does get accessed by background processes quite often. I started wondering if the Nestor was failing but then remembered the reconfigure. This morning as a test, I swapped ports, monitor on the left, Nestor on the right. Same speed and so far, none of the disconnects (and I had had two in 15 minutes before swapping ports.)

Seems like between bluetooth and TB, there are some bugs to be worked out. Hope 11.2 makes improvements.

Hi there dschommer,

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities. It sounds like you have an external drive disconnecting when trying to write some files to the drive. Since this issue does not occur when using a different connection method, it may be the port or cord you are using. Check the port for any debris and try replacing the thunderbolt cord.

Try repairing the disk in Disk Utility as well. See how here: Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac.

We hope this helps!

dschommer wrote:

Has anyone had an issue with your external SSD's on Thunderbolt (and a few times on USB3) just randomly disconnecting? It disconnects and reconnects instantly and comes back online after tossing a notification not to disconnect a drive without hitting eject.

This was an issue with some drives requiring too much voltage for the port, but I've only seen it happen to HDDs, not SSDs.

Which SSD (specifically) are you using?

One of my drives had the issue today, but only once so far. So a definite improvement, but not quite solved yet. I will start to document exactly what is going on to see if there's something common - it just appears to be random, but who knows?