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.

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

Had a look at these post on the other forum. Yers I started getting this issues, which is why I started the thread, right after buying the M1 Mac mini and upgrading it to Monterey. Before that I had basically the same drives connected to one or both at times, iMac and MBP, both Intels on Monterey, and no issues.

Then I bought the Satechi hub for the Mac mini, installed a 2TB SSD in it and the nightmare began.

As mentioned before, I have solved it running the hub through a powered hub, USB 2. I don't get the benefit of the increased SSD speed, plus I have another 2 4TB HDD and a 1TB HDD on the same powered hub, and not a single problem on any of the drives, or the SSD BTW. So it has to be a power issue IMHO. I hope it is solvable via software upgraded, but I have since lost confidence in Apple really caring about these small issues. So as far as I am concerned, no "smooth" transition to Apple silicon. Quite the contrary.

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.

I had this issue too on my Mac Mini M1. Turned out to be the enclosure. The original had an inbuilt energy saver which shut down the drive after so many minutes of being inactive. I tried disabling it, with no luck. Opted for another enclosure and it hasn't disconnected once in the last 3 months (Touch wood)

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.

dschommer wrote:

They are two M.2 NVME NGFF SSD Enclosures (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DCLPYGK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

I'm not sure about that chipset. I saw nowhere that it's supported for M1. Have you contacted the manufacture?

Here's the one that I use and have had no issues with from day one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N67P39W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

dschommer wrote:

I also happened to get my OWC Thunderbolt Hub with Thunderbolt Cable (For Thunderbolt 3 + M1 Mac & PC with Thunderbolt 4) device in the mail yesterday (as seen here https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-thunderbolt-hub) and with the thunderbolt SSD's plugged into that I was able to edit and fully render my video for about an hour and no errors/disconnects.

Yes that's the same hub that I use. It is the correct one but be careful which cable(s) you use with it. They must be TB3/4 certified.

I got even my MacBook Air replaced, but the issue persist. the older HDDs are working fine. Problem is with SSD only. Specifically, I use Buffalo SSD-PGM series - I have two of them, and both fail.

I already spent four days chatting with Apple Support, I have a meeting with "engineering".

It disconnects when it tries to read the contents of a folder with 5 or more files - in experiments, it did not disconnect until I tried to read the folder.

Lightroom never succeed to start before the disk was disconnected.

If there are few things in the folder, it can even copy 1GB files without disconnecting... Interesting, right?

It is unfortunate that the title of this thread is "External SSD". The problem is not "SSD"; it lies in the word "External".

Your Samsung SSD is not at fault. Every HDD suffers from this as well. It is related to a combination of Apple Silicon and a T2 chip.

The workaround that has been successful for the greatest number of Apple Silicon users is to "Prevent your Mac from automatically sleeping when the display is off" and never to "Put hard drives to sleep…"

Of course, we shouldn't need to apply workarounds to our products.

I'm having the same issue with my Hyper Drive disconnecting and randomly reconnecting my external HD. To troubleshoot, I used a simple $7 USB-3 to USB-c adaptor. The issue is no longer happening. No question it's coming from the Hub. I'll be returning it tomorrow.

Here's how I solved my similar issue:

• By NOT having any software (either a document file, or an app itself) running from the external drive. Specifically, don't open a stored document file on the external drive and leave it open for a long time (say overnight), even if the app itself is running on the local drive.

My example:

2020 M1 Mac Mini (256GB/16GB) Big Sur

4TB Seagate 2.5" External Drive (unpowered, plugged directly into USB-C/TB port) ie. no hub

Energy Saver - everything set to "off/never"

Running Plex Server on the local drive

Movie files stored on the external drive

At first I thought the Disk Eject error it was completely random. But I eventually noticed that whenever I played a movie from my external drive at night (through my Plex server setup), the next morning I'd awake to the dreaded "Disk Ejected Improperly" error message. Even though the Mac Mini was in another room, clearly untouched - but left on overnight. Mind you, took me while to notice the connection - as the message didn't show up right away.

This eventually wrecked the drive too. So for my new drive, I just ejected the disk after each use. Not ideal, but no error messages showed up anymore either. However, it was oddly tricky to eject the drive properly (even with Plex turned off beforehand). By right-clicking eject, the drive icon would indeed disappear as normal... but if I waited (... 20 seconds?), the icon would mysteriously reappear again. wth? Ejecting it a second time did the the trick though, for good. Weird.

Once I figured this out, I was able to replicate the process and error message over and over again, even using other software/files I had, not just Plex.

Is it possible that this glitch is due to some combination of open apps (and/or files) and the external drive ignoring MacOS sleep instructions? I suspect it's disconnecting (or sleeping?) on its own, as the drive light is off when the error message finally shows up. If the light is on though, no eject errors.