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moondav Author

Level 1

52 points

Monterey struggling with External SSD

I had meant to add this to another tread but can't now find it - not even in Safari History.. Basically since upgrading to Monterey my MacBook Pro can't connect correctly to external SSD.

This is the text I was going to add to other thread.

When I connect my Seagate Fast SSD Media 1Tb which has two partitions one APFS and the other Mac OS Extended Journaled, the OS Ext mounts instantly but the three containers of the APFS take for ever. When I finally managed to open a folder in and APFS container and tried to open it, it threw the Finder into a nervous breakdown which could not be Relaunched via Force Quit. Disconnecting the drive brought Finder back to life. I tried on another port on my MacBook Pro 2016 and tried a different cable but all to no avail. Connected drive to iMac running Big Sur and all works fine. I was tempted to reformat the Max OS Ext to APFS but will wait a while and no great urgency.

Posted on Nov 1, 2021 3:28 PM

Top-ranking reply

Maggot

Level 2

209 points

Posted on Nov 21, 2021 8:46 AM

KRisseeuw wrote:

1. I had several issues with external USB drives, Disk Utility and Time Machine on a new MacBook Pro M1 Max with Monterey 12.0.1.

USB3-drives are not properly recognized. Time Machine does not work.

2. USB-C drive did not work with either Time Machine or Disk Utility (see below).

Today I purchased a new SanDisk with USB-C connection to make a proper Time Machine backup. The Disk mounted, but Time Machine did not work, nor could I erase the drive with Disk Utility. I tried everything I knew, called Apple Support, but nothing worked (safe mode didn't work).

Workaround: I could solve it by using a Mac Mini 2018 with USB-C-Port, running MacOS Big Sur. Here the external SSD could properly mount and erasing + partitioning worked within 30 seconds. After this treatment, the drive worked well with my new MacBook. Time Machine backups worked fine after that.

Deducting from this, I see that it is not a hardware issue as much as a software issue, affecting both Time Machine and Disk Utility. I am guessing it has to do with MacOS Monterey.

The workaround as highlighted above solved it for the moment.

How on earth is this marked “solved”? The issue — Monterey has hosed compatibility with many, but not all, USB-C external drives — persists, even for KRisseeuw.

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Similar questions

155 replies

Mar 6, 2022 10:52 AM in response to davemeister

Thank you to all for your suggestions. I followed the advice to update my WD external hard drive. I could understand how to do that. Back up completed via Time Machine…at last!

felipeFL

Level 1

8 points

May 18, 2022 8:06 AM in response to tehkemo

Not over here. I’m still having issues with Apfs-formatted portable drives. I have no issues with Hfs+-formated ones though.

larryg69

Level 1

9 points

Nov 2, 2021 1:29 PM in response to moondav

Similar issue with Monterey on 2020 MBAir. Any heavy data transfer to external SSD and the drive first disconnects, Finder freezes, and then comes a kernel panic. Identical on any of 3 external SSDs, formatted as APFS or OS Extended.

bspiess

Level 1

20 points

Nov 2, 2021 3:11 PM in response to BlueberryLover

I'm using a Gtech Gdrive EV Raw 1TB and my drive when I upgraded my macbook to monterey will not eject at all, it causes my macbook to not shut down if its plugged in, and I can't delete files from the drive or copy files to my desktop.

tkaw81

Level 1

12 points

Nov 3, 2021 12:46 AM in response to moondav

Am also facing issues with external SSD after recent Monterey upgrade from Big Sur on my 2018 mac mini. SSD is 1TB Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD. The mount is taking some 10-15 mins of time. FS is MacOs Ext. I had it encrypted, thought it might be related to that. Decrypted it, still same long mount times exist.

Nov 3, 2021 3:58 AM in response to majortom1967

I don't think that this multi external SSD configuration should be an issue. I store stripped down versions of macOS on one of the external drives which is useful for testing especially with the latest update to Monterey. Each OS after Mojave uses a "volume group" for the system disk. I believe that was done to improve system integrity.

- Pie Lover

Nov 3, 2021 5:21 AM in response to majortom1967

These are APFS volume which are stored in a container (and share the allocated storage). I'm not aware of any performance penalty when using APFS. Perhaps someone else could comment further.

BTW, I think that APFS has been required for the system volume since Mojave.

- Pie Lover

moondav Author

Level 1

52 points

Nov 3, 2021 1:00 PM in response to judysings

Thank you for your response.

You correctly understand that the the Seagate drive works perfectly on the iMac running Big Sur.

Connecting the Seagate to 2016 MacBook Pro, the Mac OS Ext shows on desktop instantly but the APF containers take an age. Initially When viewed in Disk Utility two volumes could not be mounted, but they are now mounting, albeit slowly. The drive would not respond to Eject either singularly or offer Eject All

I have a Le Cie SSD external drive onto which I had recently cloned my Data using Carbon Copy Cloner before upgrading to Monterey. That drive works perfectly when connected to MB Pro.

Some developments; a friend arrived clutching the latest SanDisk extreme pro portable SSD (2,000 MB/sec) and out of the box it connected to my MBPro and worked perfectly - the speed mind-blowing.

I have connected the Seagate drive. The Mac OS Ext showed immediately with long delay before the 3 APFS volumes, but they all mounted OK. I have been able to access more folders though trying to open individual file results in spinning ball with over a minute to open a Word doc (apologies not Pages!), so beginning to conclude indexing may be what’s needing to resolve itself. When I tried to eject, this time after a delay I did get the Eject All offer and took it, with no response so looked at one or two more folder contents when I got message could’t eject because…. But actually all disc icons had left desk top. In the end I accepted the force eject offer for each volume.

Rebuild Spotlight. Whilst reading instructions I had reconnected Seagate which was taking for ever to mount the APFS volumes. In the Preferences>Spotlight, the privacy tab window was empty but after several minutes the 3 volumes mounted and one of them showed up in the Spotlight Private window. I has a suspicion that this might be the offending volume so selected it and deleted it and will now leave connected to re-index and go and do something else - adding insulation to the loft!

OK back having left plenty of time to Index the one volume. Ejecting worked correctly. When I reconnected the drive the Mac OS Ext mounted instantly the three APFS volumes after 45 seconds, but all seem to be OK.

I no longer need the empty Mac OS Ext partition son thought I would reformat APFS. That actually failed , reporting.

Erasing “Mac OS Ext” (disk2s3) and creating “New APFS”

Unmounting disk

Erasing

Initialized /dev/rdisk2s3 as a 465 GB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 40960k journal

Mounting disk

Creating a newempty APFS Container

Unmounting Volumes

The volume “New APFS” on disk2s3 couldn’t be unmounted because it is in use by process 88 (fseventsd)

Couldn’t unmount disk. : (-69888)

Operation failed…

Googling suggested this could be a hangover from an older Mac OS so I erased and reformatted Mac OS Ext and then erased and changed to APFS and this time success.

Interestingly that reconnecting disc, the new empty APFS mounted instantly whilst the other volumes again the best part of 50 seconds. They mount instantly on the iMac.

I will now re-index the two other volumes and see if that speeds things up further. Still, now working if somewhat sluggish and the Finder has had had no problems so definitely getting there.

judysings

Community Specialist

Nov 3, 2021 2:23 PM in response to moondav

Hi moondav,

Thank you for the update. It does sound like you are making good progress. Based on your experience with the LaCie and SanDisk drives with macOS Monterey, it appears the issue may be with the Seagate drive. It may be worthwhile to copy the data from the Seagate to one of these drives, erase the Seagate and format it without adding partitions.

Keep us updated on your progress.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

FDriesen

Level 1

9 points

Nov 3, 2021 6:22 PM in response to moondav

I have a similar issue and the Apple help desk advised me to disconnect the Seagate Fast SSD (2T).

Trying to do a Time Machine back up was impossible, it kept on indicating that it was "looking for the back-up disc" (Keep in mind this same SSD drive worked without a problem in Big Sur).

Indeed this Seagate is not found by the Monterey OS and the Mac was not capable of shutting down the normal way. I had to unplug the SSD.. Once this was done all went well.

The Apple Engineer told me that this was a known issue and they are working to resolve this..(May be wrong or no Seagate drivers were installed.)

I might add that the install of the Monterey was no issue on my iMac Pro and my wife's 21.5" iMac and both have SSD back up drives but NO Seagate.

.The Monterey install on my 21.5" iMac stalled at that 80% load progress.. Had to restart in safe mode and got Monterey finally installed. However could not turn it off etc.. That's where the removal of the Seagate SSD came into play.. Once removed all went well..

Just wanted to share my experience...

moondav Author

Level 1

52 points

Nov 5, 2021 8:25 AM in response to judysings

Final Update

Out of interest whilst Seagate connected to MacBook Pro running Monterey, I tried to run First Aid on one of the volumes but got the message:-

Checking file system and repairing if necessary and if possible

Volume was successtully unmounted

Can't repair volume because other APES Volumes in its Container are mounted. Unmount them. or perform a repair while running from another macOS svstem (such as thenRecover System).

Restoring the original state round as mounted.

Unable to unmount volume for repair. : (-69673)

I was able to delete the volumes but could not reformat the whole disc:-

Erasing "Seagate Fast SSD Media" (disk2) and creating "Seagate BU"

Unmounting disk

The volume on disk couldn't be unmounted because It is In use by process 141

Couldn't open device•-69877)

So connected to iMac running Big Sur and had no problems reformatting APFS with no partition. I have added files and it now mounts instantly and works fine on Monterey Mac.

Thanks

Fool4him

Level 1

8 points

Nov 12, 2021 11:00 AM in response to moondav

I have an OWC Mercury Electra 6G 480 GB SSD inside a Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive enclosure. It is formatted as APFS and works fine on Big Sur on my iMac. It also worked fine under Big Sur on my 2016 (13") MacBook Pro. Since updating the MacBook Pro to Monterey, however, the drive refuses to mount. The device shows up in Disk Utility, but the Container won't mount and the device is unresponsive. I have the same enclosure with a WD750 GB mechanical/spinning drive in it. It mounts fine. My other portable drives, which are also mechanical drives work fine. I see over on MacRumors that many people are experiencing trouble with connecting devices through USB Hubs on Monterey. Which, of course, is exactly how I am connecting these devices. That said, the 6 different Memory sticks I own all connect fine through this hub. The only thing that doesn't work is the SSD drive named above. I'm convinced this is a bug in Monterey.

Nov 13, 2021 9:40 AM in response to KRisseeuw

I'm not sure that I agree entirely with your conclusions. In my case, I also have a Mac mini (2018) which was sucessfully upgraded to Monterey (from Big Sur). It has two external SSDs (Samsung 500GB T5 connected via USB 3.1 (Gen 2)) that work well for OS, data, and Time Machine volumes. So it seems to me that there is still a possibility that these issues may be related to SSD hardware. Another possibility is that firmware changes delivered with Monterey for other Mac models may have introduced compatibility issues with some external SSDs.

BTW, all my external (and internal) volumes are in APFS containers. The Time Machine volumes (one on each external SSD) are encrypted/case-sensitive with a disk quota (I used a Terminal command to create the Time Machine volumes).

- Pie Lover

Maggot

Level 2

209 points

Nov 13, 2021 10:16 AM in response to BlueberryLover

BlueberryLover wrote:

I'm not sure that I agree entirely with your conclusions. In my case, I also have a Mac mini (2018) which was sucessfully upgraded to Monterey (from Big Sur). It has two external SSDs (Samsung 500GB T5 connected via USB 3.1 (Gen 2)) that work well for OS, data, and Time Machine volumes. So it seems to me that there is still a possibility that these issues may be related to SSD hardware. Another possibility is that firmware changes delivered with Monterey for other Mac models may have introduced compatibility issues with some external SSDs.

BTW, all my external (and internal) volumes are in APFS containers. The Time Machine volumes (one on each external SSD) are encrypted/case-sensitive with a disk quota (I used a Terminal command to create the Time Machine volumes).

- Pie Lover

I guess you can count yourself lucky. Not every external was affected; in my case, one drive, which is used to back up photos, continues to operate as it should, while the other will not mount in Monterey.

And yet, it does mount and function perfectly when used with a MBP running Big Sur.

Nov 13, 2021 12:23 PM in response to Maggot

I wonder if your workaround would have also worked on your M1Max Mac Book Pro using the Disk Utility that comes with the bootable installer for Big Sur. I used this trick to get around a restriction (with Disk Images) that seems to have been introduced with Monterey.

Speaking of luck :-), I'm thinking about getting an M1 based Mac (probably the new Mac mini). Still photography is a hobby but recently I've been experimenting with video using iMovie.

- Pie Lover

Monterey struggling with External SSD