External Drives in Monterey

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

Posted on Oct 29, 2021 1:14 PM

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Posted on Jan 24, 2022 9:50 AM

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:

  • I disconnected the cable at both ends.
  • Blew out with a sharp burst of breath the female connectors in the body of my MBP and the port in the external disc, and
  • Blew out the insides of the USB-C male connectors.
  • Reconnected everything.


That was two days ago, and the external disc has not disconnected since then.

105 replies

Nov 11, 2021 7:42 AM in response to Oliver Jobson


I did see your post, Oliver, and thanks for that. Frankly, though, after buying the Apple branded USB-C to USB-C cable (not the charger, the one with decent transfer rates) and still not being able to mount the drive, I may just set the drive aside for a while, see if they address a fix in the next Monterey iteration. If not, I’m definitely going to try your fix. Everything is still wrecking well, and transfer rates remain decent?



Oliver Jobson wrote:

See my earlier post in this thread about different cables. Would be interested to know if that solves the issue for you?


Dec 20, 2021 7:21 AM in response to pdbowman

I am not sure whether I would bother, mate. Seemed to be better in 12.0x with it turned off, but it's back in 12.1, though not regularly. Sometimes I'll get 5 notifications a day, many days nothing.

With the new hyper-restricted kernel and system, Apple cannot blame extensions for this cr@p, it's just poor quality control.


My suspicion is something is still powering down the usb channel that the sd card uses, or the kext is being unloaded by the system, but the log files aren't giving me any clues as to what, at this moment.


Merry crimbo, one and all, and fingers crossed santa gives us a (new year's) resolution to this issue in -very- early 2022!

Jan 24, 2022 12:49 PM in response to Old Toad

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

Though, to be completely honest, no, I haven't booted into safe mode, as there is little else can be done on the mac in that mode, and as it is, the random mounts and unmounts are...Erm...random, and can occur multiple times a day, or not happen for a few days. This has not occurred in high sierra, the little time I dabbled in 10.14, or big sur.

It is on a 'clean' system, ie not upgraded from an earlier one.

If it were only me, I would assume something I had running, but as I say, it's pretty clean with no system-level malfeasance. As you correctly point out, a guest/new user account should put any user-level additions to bed, but they do not. It's a system-level flaw. NOTHING should be forcing an unmounted sd card to mount without user input, *nothing*, and that's forgetting the forced-unclean-ejecting of media.

It isn't just me, and it isn't a user-issue.


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External Drives in Monterey

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