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 had so much trouble with my Seagate external drive partitioned for Time Machine and SuperDuper backups unmounting after upgrading to Monterey (as well as other issues with Monterey), I went back to Catalina.
Now I'm having the same issue with inexplicable unmounting of the Seagate Time Machine partition with Catalina. I had absolutely no issues when I was running Mojave.
Often I have to go into Recovery Mode/Disk Utilities to reformat the drive. Not sure whether it's related to the Seagate brand, as I have other backup drives that are functioning fine under Catalina.
I have just acquired a new MacBook Pro running Monterey 12.3.1, and it is randomly unmounting and then remounting my Seagate portable drives. I stream video from these drives, and the streaming is also frequently freeze-framing as if the data flow is being interrupted. I cannot run a 45min video without the freeze occurring several times, and unmounting occurring two or even three times. This never happened with the previous machine (an older MB Pro running Mojave), and I see from this forum and other discussion sites that Monterey now has a reputation for this damaging activity. Is Apple ever likely to fix what is surely a bug in Monterey?
As this discussion clearly implies, this behavior is a problem with Monterey and solely with Monterey and external drives. As you say, it is potentially damaging and Apple should address it. But, of course, there is nothing but silence from Apple.
There are other posts in this forum of G-drives not working properly after the Mac was upgraded to Monterey.
This clear points at an issue with the new software, can you escalate this to the developers? I have reported an issue through the feedback route.
See my earlier post in this thread about different cables. Would be interested to know if that solves the issue for you?
On an iMac it is System Preferences, Energy Saver. on a MacBook, System Preferences, Battery.
I have a similar issue. Monterey hung on install, and I had to power off. When I fired it up, the installation worked, but my external drive was not seen in the finder or in disk utility.
Eventually, the (parent) drive showed up in DisknUtility, although the child drive, "Time Machine," was greyed out. I ran First Aid, and it seemed okay, but an attempt to erase and reformat failed. Here's a screeshot of what I encountered:
I talked this through with Apple Suypport, and they claimed it was pure coincidence that a drive that had worked perfectly for a year failed immediately after installing Monterey. I've also talked with Western Digital (the drive was a G-DRIVE mobile USB-C) who said they'd had issues like this, but with Macs that were running the M1 chip.
I think this is extremely odd, but am not a wizard with computers. The Mac is a late 2020 iMac i5 3.3Ghz with 32G RAM. Any input gratefully accepted!
Maggot
Ouch - yeah, I agree, this is a frustrating one.
It was working flawlessly last night - 4k web cam plugged into my USB-C monitor at 5gbps and fine for meetings. This morning I get up and plug in the USB-C cable (gen1) from the monitor into the MacBook Pro M1 and it's back at 480mbps. Nothing changed so I don't know why this is happening.
In fact I noticed this morning that USB was now only connecting at 480mbps if I used the USB-C port furthest away from me. If I use the other one then the hub didn't work at all - didn't register any USB, even though the monitor displayed an image fine from both ports.
I am ******.
Apple support on the phone today who recommended an SMC reset and then OS X reinstall. Had to do that on my lunch break but didn't make a difference.
Still in the same hole.
Oliver Jobson wrote:
Ouch - yeah, I agree, this is a frustrating one.
It was working flawlessly last night - 4k web cam plugged into my USB-C monitor at 5gbps and fine for meetings. This morning I get up and plug in the USB-C cable (gen1) from the monitor into the MacBook Pro M1 and it's back at 480mbps. Nothing changed so I don't know why this is happening.
In fact I noticed this morning that USB was now only connecting at 480mbps if I used the USB-C port furthest away from me. If I use the other one then the hub didn't work at all - didn't register any USB, even though the monitor displayed an image fine from both ports.
I am ******.
Apple support on the phone today who recommended an SMC reset and then OS X reinstall. Had to do that on my lunch break but didn't make a difference.
Still in the same hole.
I truly feel badly for you; that’s a lot of hoops to jump through, to no avail. Hopefully, a fix will be issued soon.
andreserb wrote:
Monterey It's freaking me out!! my SD works fine until this D4MN upgrade. programatic obsolescence???
No. Just a bug in the OS that hopefully will be addressed soon. (Aside from this gripe, I’ve found Monterey’s performance actually very good.)
scottmoore_seattle2 wrote: "Please Apple, you need to do much better..."
scottmoore ~ Although Apple administers these communities, that doesn't include reading each of thousands of daily posts for possible feedback. However, Apple will "read all feedback carefully" here:
õ¿õ¬
Still happening, though less frequently now with the sysprefs setting turned off, in 12.1. Really shoddy quality control by apple. Also now occurring are complete system freezes, without the panic screen of old (just had another, prompting me to write). Pathetic, really, from the richest company on earth. Can you tell I'm a little miffed?
As for sending 'feedback', it's obvious from the poster above how much notice they take of that
I always hate it when I'm on a support forum, and someone says "X company doesn't read all these posts so you should go here.... ". Adobe does the same thing, although they're getting better. But this sounds like an Apple problem. If Apple creates help forums where people can help each other, but they don't do read the forums, then that's an Apple problem. Honestly I'm not sure they read all the macOS Feedback either.
fantastic Howard that a simple clean solved your problem, but I'm afraid it will be a different story for those of us with sd card reader problems.
The problems are not down to dirt.
How can I be sure? In order to avoid data loss on the sd card, my 'genius' idea was to gracefully unmount the card either through the Finder or Disk Utility. The OS, however, has different ideas, and randomly re-mounts the sd card, only to dump it again when it is bored of it, and then send me a message that *I* ejected the card, without unmounting it first, which is not good practice. No ****, sherlock!
Monterey is buggy as **** - for many tasks, like, say, opening a new window in safari, it feels like I'm on a 2010 era HDD macbook pro, not a speedy ssd mean machine. High sierra was snappy as a snappy thing, and it's back there I'm heading.
It's almost as if apple are causing these problems and slowing down our machines in order to nudge us towards new hardware, doesn't it? I've sung the apple hymns and waved their banner through (very) hard times and good for 30 years, and this crap stinks.
External Drives in Monterey
