I'm seeing rumblings that I'm not the only one here...mid-2015 MBP and upgraded to Monterey and immediately after upgrade my external USB drive (Time Machine) and SD card (in the lost) periodically unmount themselves, give a warning and then randomly remount. This makes these external storages unusable- Time Machine won't even engage in the updated, current state.
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 12.0
I’ve just had a success with a very simple fix. My external drive got to the point that it was disconnecting every few seconds.
The problem: It was dirt in the connectors.
Solution:
That was two days ago, and the external disc has not disconnected since then.
" I have 4 external physical drives, 2 of them partitioned into 2 virtual drives for a total of 6 accessible external drives. And 2 of them are Time Machine drives. None of them ever disconnect. "
I think you mean you have 6 volumes, but let's not split hairs, that's still a decent number of attached drives for the following.
Lawrence, genuine questions to help narrow the issue;
Are your drives powered externally, that is to say 3.5" drives in enclosures, or even 2.5" drives off of a powered hub (and yes, I cringe at bringing hubs back into this, but it is/they are relevant here)?
My suspicion is that a bug in os12 is occasionally cutting power to the internal usb hub rail in the macbook, which would of course be the same as yanking the usb cable/sd card out, which would also lead to the messages we (the afflicted) have been getting.
If they are NOT on an external powered hub or external powered supply, then that would indicate there is something about your machine which is different than others afflicted - other than being M1 of course.
By far most of the cases with issues I have followed have been with intel macbooks, but I do recall - without checking if it was this thread or others - that *some* apple silicon macbooks and imacs were also affected. But, that could be a similar result from a different root cause, naturally.
Secondly, since you don't appear to have issues with drives/volumes being autonomously-force-ejected, could you run an experiment?
If they are not mission-critical during the sleeping hours, could you un-mount the drives, but not remove the usb cables or power, before going to bed, and see if any/all have magically mounted themselves in the morning. You might need to pause time machine backups during this test, as that might mount an unmounted-yet-connected drive.
If all your drives ARE externally powered, try the above test one or two nights, and then, if there are any smaller drives that can draw power from the M1's usb port only, run the test with them, and see if *they* mount autonomously, without your intervention.
I cannot recall if your macbook has an sd card slot, but if it does, could you also leave one in (without any data on it that you cannot afford to lose to drive corruption of course) of a couple of days, first mounted, and then unmounted, to see what happens?
Though my internal SD card doesn't always force-unmount, it will almost always mount itself from an unmounted state over a period of 12 hours or so.
Better would be if you have an intel macbook also running os12 to perform the test, but even with the laptops I have in the house, I only have one running os12, so options are limited.
What is even more perplexing, is that if I unmount the sd card myself, I then cannot re-mount the sd card without removing it then reinserting it; when unmounted by me, it no longer appears in Disk Utility, for me to simply click 'mount'. It is this that makes me suspect that power is being cut - however briefly - to the macbooks' internal usb hub, and then reinstated. When this happens on a force-unmounted sd card, it would be the equivalent of the OS suddenly finding an sd card in the slot, and then mounting it. Or internal bus-powered usb drive, of course.
If you should undertake to test the drives, I thank you in advance.
Since it might help to get an idea of what machines are affected, those of us with problems could perhaps list machines at the bottom of the post.
Mine with this problem is a 2015 2.5ghz dual-graphics 15" macbook pro. No issues prior to OS12 (other than the display coating peeling off, of course...)
Lawrence Finch wrote:
Good questions. I’ll answer what I can. Yes, I meant volumes, not drives in one case; the other is actually a RAID drive configured as 2 separate drives.
My M1 has an OWC 14 port powered hub (which actually powers the MBP through USB-C/Thunderbolt 3). I have 1 drive (2 volumes) plugged directly into the other Thunderbolt 3 port on the MBP. the 2nd & 3rd drives (the split RAID) plugged into a USB-C port on the hub. The last drive is a hardware mirrored RAID drive pair plugged into a USB-A port (a very old WD MyBook, probably 10 years old or more) as one of the TM drives; the other TM drive is one drive of the split RAID. The OWC also has SD and micro-SD slots. I’ve used these slots with no problem, either. I use 2 volumes for alternating CCC backups (yes, I’m really big on backing up).
I don’t doubt there are configurations that have a problem and tracking it down should be Apple’s responsibility, but I’m happy to work on narrowing down the problem. But the more interesting question is what is the commonality between the Macs that DO have this issue. And are all of them configured to NOT shut down drives to save power when the Mac is idle; that is an available option.
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thanks for the answers!
You are of course absolutely correct that tracking down the problem should be Apple's job, but to give them the benefit if the doubt, I can understand a bug creeping in or being affect by something new in Monterey, and not thoroughly testing older machines is perhaps an unfortunate result of getting a shiny new OS every year. That said, they have been notified of this problem, and so should have resolved it by now, or at least issued guidance to users to preclude sd card corruption because of this problem. Can you imagine a wedding photographer, for example, working on last weekend's photos only to see the whole lot disappear? Yes, I know they *should* be recoverable, if not at file-system level, then at least at bit level, but it's just a headache we simply don't need. So many of Apple's users are high-end creators, and corruption-inducing bugs like this should not be allowed to persist.
Your one drive with two volumes plugged directly into the Thunderbolt 3 port on the MBP; is that bus-powered or externally powered? If it is externally powered, then it is not likely to succumb to this problem, if my thesis holds water, but if it is a 'portable', ie macbook internal usb bus-powered drive, then it is an ideal candidate for testing.
None of the other cards or drives plugged into the hub should be affected by this issue, as they are not deriving power from the macbook, 'merely' using it to process data.
as a further update, on reboot into normal mode (ie, not safeboot) I ejected the sd card. Now, around two and a half hours later, I just checked and the sd has reappeared. Hasn't been kicked out yet, but that will come.
So, to be clear;
Booting into safe mode STILL lets the OS 'randomly' mount an unmounted sd card on its own volition, with no user input.
Clearing caches etc, effected by the safeboot furthermore has no effect (but then, why should it, as the same behaviour was observed in SB mode anyway, indicating it is NOT a bad cache/errant extension/dodgy user daemon etc)
The mounting/unmounting of the sd card is not reported in the system log, which is in of itself a little odd, but hey ho.
My suspicion is that something (bug) is 'randomly' interrupting power to the sd card usb interface, though some other users here have reported this same eject/mount activity with external usb devices too, so it maybe the whole usb line being taken down. This interruption is then compensated for by the OS, causing it to mount a usb device, whether that be external or sd card connection point, as it would appear to the os that the device has just been plugged in.
This interruption would explain both the force-ejecting-by-the-os AND the os-mounting-when-not-wanted, as the last one should certainly not happen other than on reboot (force relaunching the finder, for example, does not mount the card)
If anyone has a better explanation and solution, then as prince charles might say, 'I'm all ears'
In my judgment the issue rests solely at the feet of Monterey. My Time Machine worked perfectly, never a glitch of any sort, until I updated to Monterey. Now every time I wake my iMac I get the Disk Not Ejected Properly alert. The cable is sound (never any issues before Monterey); TM always worked seamlessly; there's nothing wrong with the TM drives that Disk Utility could identify. All back to Monterey!
Any of that might be correct. But there's no downside to blowing out your ssd port and wiping the card contacts with a little alcohol. Just sayin'…
Hey apple, get your stuff together regarding how to handle a SD card in your slot. Stuff has been going on for years without a fix. The OS needs to know how to handle proper ejection and re mounting of SD cards. When sleeping, the mac wakes say for notifications or other tasks, when this happens and it goes back to sleep the disk gets forcibly ejected, causing the error message. Monterey it does this far more frequently but the issue has been around for a while. Since you have your new M1 MacBook pros and brought back the precious SD card slot, fix your issues. Sick of this. Tons and tons of people have this issue, why do you think there are all these auto eject software out there, problem is that stuff has not worked on recent OS versions. There are plenty of features that people probably won't use on this new OS update how about fix a common issue. I have submitted this in Apple Feedback as stated above, I encourage everyone else to so it will show "similar" requests so that this will get a harder look.
I have the same behavior on both M1 and I7 Minis. For the former, this eventually caused several of the drives to fail. However, Apple was unable to determine the cause of the issue. They even swapped out the logic board on the M1. I had been only seeing it on Big Sur on the M1, but it wasn't fixed with Monterey. The swap happened on Monterey. I just started seeing the issue on my I7 Mini yesterday. I have done all of the usual tests for hardware, drive health (see the same, inconsistent, error messages that others see). I had reinstalled the OS on both machines on multiple occasions. Apple suggested that I keep doing that, I refuse. Their error workflow is frustrating and they clearly aren't looking at the case notes on any of this. I have nothing constructive to add as far as a solution, just that it seems to be a common problem.
Like just about every large company Apple has both formal technical support and an area where users can discuss technical issues with other users. And, like all of those other companies, Apple does not participate in any significant way in the user-to-user discussions, as that might inhibit the free flow of ideas. The formal name of this area is Apple Support Communities. The “Communities” should be a giveaway that this isn’t a formal support site. And if that doesn’t, the site itself is https://discussions.apple.com. The “discussions” is another giveaway.
Apple’s formal support can be reached several ways:
Note that both of the above have options to receive a callback or chat
Lawrence, the problem is so widespread (and coincides exactly with Monterey's release) that probability demands a hard look at the OS.
While my major problem with my external Time Machine drive — only one drive was afflicted, and it would not show up in Finder or Disk Utility — was resolved with a previous Monterey update, there are residual performance issues, including sluggish response times and (this is weird) the displacement of all my Desktop files and folders to the extreme right of my screen after entering and then exiting Time Machine.
It's not a fully functional OS, at least when it comes to accommodating external drives — all of which in my case were purchased from the Apple Store.
I have the identical problem; until I updated to Monterey, my Time Machine backups worked perfectly on my Seagate external 1T drive which is partitioned to two 500 GB, one for Time Machine, one for my disk backup with SuperDuper. First Aid in Disk Utility always fails. After I erase the TM partition in the Recovery Disk Utility, all works fine for a day, then the Time Machine partition stops mounting.
With so many others having this issue, it certainly seems like it's an Apple software issue. Such a time-consuming nuisance to have to keep going into Recovery to reformat the partition, to only have it work for a few days at most.
Same issue. My Seagate 1T external drive connected directly to my MacBook Air was partitioned to backup Time Machine and SuperDuper. This worked fine in Mojave. In Monterey the Time Machine partition kept unmounting. I could only reformat that partition to APFS by going into Recovery. Disk Utility on the local computer did not work. Finally erased my laptop hard drive and installed Catalina, and am still having the same issue. Time Machine backed up fine yesterday, today unmounted and I received the message the Time Machine could not backup to the disk. Disk Utility in Catalina formatted the TM partition in APFS, and now Time Machine is formatting it in Mac OS Extended to prepare it for backing up. I have no doubt I'll be facing the same issue tomorrow.
I am having exactly the same problem with my 2021 iMac 27" (Intel) running macOS 12.3.1 using every conceivable method of connecting my 8T external drive. And I 'never' put my Mac to sleep, so it's not a wakeup issue for me. It is definitely a Monterey problem that Apple should address, perhaps before counting their Mon(ter)ey. For now, I am using CCC and DSuperDuper! for reliable backups. 'They just work.'
Have you contacted Apple support about the issue? The only way they know its a problem is if people tell them.
I have noted this periodically since big sur, get an apple notification that disk ejected improperly and the remounts. Fortunately, it is infrequent and unrelated to cables or drives. I think it is some issue with the OS
My SD slot is filled with a flushed SD card caddy and never comes out. It has my music and media on it and now every time the machine wakes up from sleep I get the message: [Disk Not Ejected Properly, Eject "Media" before disconnecting or turning it off.] Before installing Monterey 12.0.1 it had always worked great. Is this damaging the card??
External Drives in Monterey
