Samsung T7 crashes Big Sur

Hi felix the cat!,

It sounds like you're experiencing an issue using an external storage device with your Mac, correct? We want to see how we can help.

Can you let us know more about the issue you're experiencing? For example, are you receiving a specific error message when this happens? If so, what does the error say?

In case you haven't seen it already, the following page has some great information about using external storage devices with Mac: Use external storage devices with Mac

Take care!

I just got a Samsung T7 a few weeks ago. Here's what I did:

1. Opened Disk Utility
2. Chose Show all devices from the View menu
3. Selected the top-level "parent" device of the Samsung T7 SSD in Disk Utility's sidebar
4. Click the Erase button in the toolbar
5. Chose APFS format with GUID

I have been using this SSD to make and update a "clone" of my Mac's internal drive. So basically every file on my Mac has been copied to this SSD. I have been using SuperDuper to do the file copying, and the "clone" has not been made bootable yet (that takes some extra steps with Big Sur), but it has all files copied over, more than 300 GB.

Not sure how you went about formatting and you used ExFat (which still should work with both PCs and Macs) so your situation is different in several ways but I have one Samsung T5 and two Samsung T7's. One of the T7 drives is formatted as HFS+, the other is APFS. All of these have been used to copy varying amounts from 300 GB to 600 GB of files from different Macs.

As a Mac user you don't generally need the software that comes with external drives...even if it says "For the Mac" or whatever. This software can cause problems and often doesn't work well with macOS. The best thing to do, I think, would be to completely delete the drive using Disk Utility and re-format it as APFS and start afresh! I also use Samsung external SSDs, and after doing this have no problems with them. Hope this helps you! Regards, Ian.

felix the cat! wrote:

I did use the firmware on on older MacBook though to unlock the drive so as to be able to format it and ensure no firmware is on it in case such was preinstalled.

If you set up the firmware on the older Mac with the drive connected, then it installed its hooks onto the external drive also. So unless you have those third party utilities also on the newer Mac, the drive may not work. In which case, unless you are very careful to have the latest version that is compatible with Big Sur, unpredictable results can occur (including an unusable drive).

As was suggested by Ian, reformat the drive completely using Apple's Disk Utility (not a third party utility), and in addition, then uninstall any of the disk manufacturer's software, firmware, utilities from all your Macs. Use such external drives without any third party firmware/utilities etc. so that you can update your MacOS going forward without worrying about the drive stopping working.

Not sure of the sequence of events when you installed Samsung firmware on a different Mac, then erased/formatted the T7 with it. But if you used the Samsung utilities instead of Disk Utility to erase/reformat, beware if that means that the T7 still has Samsung firmware embedded in it. Because drives with such firmware typically work best when the Mac they are being used with also have the corresponding utilities. The cleanest approach is to remove such firmware from the external drive (if you keep it you have to keep both it and the corresponding Mac software up to date as your MacOS gets updated over time). If you erased and formatted it with the Apple Disk Utility, I think you should be fine. If you erased/formatted it with Samsung's utility, you might encounter problems down the road (like that kernel panic you experienced).

I don't understand needing to use the manufacturer's utilities or firmware here at all. I have Samsung T5 and T7 drives (multiple ones) and when I took them out of the box, simply ran Apple Disk Utility to erase/reformat all of those drives to ensure that they are "vanilla" blank drives before using them.

The Samsung Utilities for the T5 and T7 do more than manage the password protection. They also update the firmware on the device which is a separate issue. I like to keep the firmware on all my drives up to date, but not bothered about Samsung protection. You can download the Firmware Updaters from the Samsung website. I expect this is the same app as supplied on the devices, but probably preferable as you can be sure it is the most recent.

The safest way to use external drives is to erase and reformat them immediately and use them as generic drives, no extra firmware, utilities, etc. All that extra stuff can add convenient functionality but also can someday potentially conflict with the MacOS after an update or upgrade. There are scores of posts in the Apple Discussions from people who have experienced this, sometimes with dire results. Also that Blueharvest utility is advertised as a "storage cleaner," so it is trying to change or remove files behind the scenes on all external drives that you connect. Sounds harmless but you've been having issues with multiple types and makes of external drives, that's not typical. I'd uninstall and completely remove all these "extras" until you get a stable configuration, then you can try adding them back one at a time.

The cause of the problem is probably not Big Sur -- more commonly something works on an earlier version of the MacOS but is not fully compatible with the latest version, so when you update or upgrade, the conflict becomes apparent.

Quality drives should not require special firmware or utilities to work with the MacOS.

I agree about formatting new drives, but sometimes new products need firmware updates. As with software I prefer to keep everything up to date. I don't believe manufacturers go to the trouble and expense of updating firmware without reason.