External Drives in Monterey

no, you are quite right :) And if that hadn't been one of the first things I had done, right before I went and bought another 512 gig sd card, thinking it was borked, I would have been scuttling off to my little Cupboard of Nefarious Liquids® to get my bottle of 99.9 isopropyl alcohol, to squirt away at the macbook innards.

I'm giving it till 12.2, and then I'm back to 10.13

Cheers

"A simple workaround is to not sleep the computer but just put the screen to sleep. What with SSDs they don't need to be put to sleep like rotational HDs do to extend life. "

Also thought of that, but alas it does not work either.

As I mentioned, it still burbs the card out (or at least thinks it does) but not only that randomly MOUNTS an unmounted card for no reason.

Buggy

Buggy

BUGGY

Jan 24, 2022 1:05 PM in response to Old Toad

this ain't my first rodeo, brother. Did I mention 30 years?

30 years old ain't a lot of experience.

No, thats 30 years of owning macs :)

Just for the squits and giggles, I booted into safe mode before going to bed last night, ejected the sd card - but of course didnt remove it - and this morning on my awakening, it was remounted.

as I said...

I'll copy and paste below for your benefit:

"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."

NOT referring to external readers/hubs.

Hope that clears it up

Kindly read the subject of this thread before telling people to stick to the subject. Discussions of the internal slot are “corrupting the subject”, which is specifically about external drives.

You have an important issue to discuss, but, as it isn’t about external drives, you would be better off creating your own post with a new subject.

"Kindly read the subject of this thread before telling people to stick to the subject. Discussions of the internal slot are “corrupting the subject”, which is specifically about external drives."

Kindly re-read what I wrote, re-read the opening post, and immediate follow-ups, and continue to not pollute the thread with comments which are not about external drives (NOT hubs) and internal sd card readers.

If you have anything positive to add on these two issues, it would be welcome

If you wish to start a thread about external card readers or hubs, kindly start a new thread

Perhaps, but on my M1 MBP with Monterey 12.2.1 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. Check your settings very carefully.

Can't imagine what 'settings' I might need to check. Nothing from before Monterey. But happy to follow any suggestions. As Maggot indicates, TM is the only external drive that's affected for me. And TM continues to make backups for me; just that annoying notification about not ejecting properly.

Hi Lawrence Finch,

Thanks for this. Chinig back in. I'm on an 2020 iMac (20,1) so not an M1 chipset — I should have mentioned that earlier.

Not sure where to check if my drives are configured to not shut down when the Mac is idle. Would you let me know where I can check if this option is or isn't selected? (FWIW, both drives — the afflicted Time Machine drive and the other, which backs up my Photos — continue to blink even if the iMac got to sleep. The drives are 4TB (July 2020 build) and 2TB (Nov 2019 build) G-Drive mobile USB-C externals, with the 4TB drive being the problematic one. (Identical except for capacity and build date, BTW. Formatted Journaled HFS+.)

The 'Energy Saver Preference' approach may work for internal drives, but it certainly doesn't work for Ethernet-connected drives (which is how my TimeMachine is linked). Again, this wasn't an issue before Monterey, and doesn't appear to affect TM backups. It's just a nuisance that appears to be collateral damage with Monterey.

I actually misspoke above. The two SSDs are connected directly to the iMac Pro.

I've since removed the doc and the main USB backup drive is direct connected.

I shared a link to this thread with Apple support. Maybe something will come of it.

He had me reset SMC, so I gave it a shot.

I have noticed this issue on 2020 mac mini that i bought recently. It started disconnecting external drives randomly. I will have to reinsert them and mount back and run first aid by disk utility resolving issue. Still happening as of now. is there any resolution for the issue?

I am having the same issue with a MacBook Air with Catalina. My iMac with Catalina is not having issues, but I've erased the laptop, reinstalled the OS, also erased the Seagate backup drive, partitioned for an external backup as well as Time Machine. The unmounting issue keeps occurring. I'm wondering if it's the Seagate drive itself. As I keep my .dmg downloads in a Dropbox folder, I'm able to reinstall my apps without too much difficulty.

The next day and it is happening again.

I have the same issue as PerryB. Monterey 12.0.1 Early 2015 13" MacBook Pro 8gb RAM and 128gb SSD. Was working fine before upgrade. First Aid doesn't sort the problem.