Monterey struggling with External SSD

I have a Pluggable brand SSD Thunderbolt drive. I had to use Disk Utility to erase and partition the drive as APFS. When I did that, I was able to download and install Monterey onto the drive. I then used Time Machine to bring all my other files to the SSD. I then used Startup Disk in the System Preferences to choose the Pluggable drive as my boot drive. Since then, my 2017 iMac has been blazing fast (the internal drive is just a storage drive at this point).

As a side note, I tried to reindex the Fusion drive by going to Spotlight preferences, dragging the internal drive to the window to exclude it from indexing, and then deleted it to force the Spotlight to reindex the drive. I restarted the computer probably 4-5 times and it was really quick. But then, all of sudden, it went back to a startup time taking over 10 minutes. Something really, really funky going on with the software it would seem.

So, I'm glad the SSD drive is working out. My 2017 iMac is quite comparable in speeds now to a brand new 2020 Intel iMac with the external drive when working in Final Cut Pro.

I have installed (fresh install) Monterey 12.1 on an external SSD (SanDisk Extreme 1Tb).

It works.

BUT if I connect the other external SSD (even when Monterey has booted), the mount hangs.

FYI, the other SSD is an ADATA where I boot regularly BigSur (and from which I am writing this), so it is definitely not an hardware issue.

So, progress, I guess, but not success.

Similar problem here.

After an update to Monterey, my external Samsung EVO 4TB couldn't mount on my MacMini. I couldn't see it with DiskUtil. My MacBookPro couldn't see it (Monterey also). Even a MBook Air of a colleague didn't see it (Big Sur).

I had to go to a shop to format it with a PC.

Then, I can now see it and format it. But it's not working with APFS of HFS+. It seems to work with exFAT.

I'm also using a Mac mini (2018) with Monterey 12.1. I have 2 external SSDs both Samsung T5 500 GB models. One is connected directly to a USB 3.1 (Gen 2) port with a Type C connector. The other is connected to a (StarTech) USB 3.0 hub, again using a USB Type C cable. Neither disk is encrypted and I haven't installed the Samsung supplied software. The drives are formatted as multi-volume APFS containers (including Time Machine backup volumes).

These drives have been very reliable over the past 2-3 years (with Mojave, Catalina, & Big Sur). I haven't experienced any of the recently reported external drive issues with either of these devices.

The only time I experienced an issue is when I disconnected one of the SSDs before it was properly unmounted (which lead to system crashes). If I recall correctly, I wasn't able to completely repair it with the Disk Utility and eventually had to erase and re-format.

Hope this helps.

- Pie Lover

Monterey has serious problem with external HD, not just SDD. It corrupted my simple single-partition HFS+ disk TWICE in a week right after upgrading to Monterey. In both cases, I could not use FirstAid in Disk Utility to fix the disk in both occurrences. Only way to recover is to reformat the disk. In both cases,

I now reverted my MAC mini back to Catalina. It's been a week, and my external HD is fine.

I use 2 x Samsung T5 500GB SSDs with my Mac mini (2018). I have noticed that it takes longer to mount these devices (when newly connected to the computer) especially for encrypted Time Machine backup volumes. I'm guessing it can take as long as 1-2 minutes.

I use a volume (in an APFS Container) on one of the SSDs to backup photographs. Many are jpg but I also have DNG and CR3 (Canon RAW format) images. I haven't experienced any of the issues that you mention. I also use Lightroom (LR V6.14 which is a quite old).

One thing to note is that I haven't installed the Samsung supplied software since it's my understanding that it is only required for hardware-based encryption of an entire SSD.

Hope this helps.

- Pie Lover

P.S. I exclusively use APFS Containers and volumes

I've noticed a couple of things that might narrow the domain of the problem. I have another 4TB SSD in a Sabrent USB 3.0 enclosure. It was formatted with APFS (NOT Case Sensitive) on Big Sur. It is connected directly to one of the (late 2013) Mac Pro's USB Ports. I use it for my Music library. It seems to be working perfectly fine (and is being used rather heavily). So I think the direct USB connection is a problem for Disk Utility erasing/formatting the external SSD drive and subsequent Time Machine updates. I tried APFS (NOT Case Sensitive) and Time Machine seems to force the backup drive to be APFS (Case Sensitive) for the first backup. So, this may be specific to formatting and writing to an APFS (Case Sensitive) external SSD with a direct USB connection using Time Machine or Disk Utility.

Exactly what I’ve observed. Drive is terribly slow and often refuses to format in the default method. Sometime manually unmount followed by formatting with DOS Fat 32 followed by APFS works and the drive runs fine for the remainder of that session. Couple of days later is playing up again. Just can’t trust those drives for important backups. Maybe we need to start feeding back which makes models and versions work and don’t work. Purchasing a replacement is a total lottery.

I assume it’s not a drive problem but a partition problem with usbc. I have 3 identical ssds, which 2 are APFS and one HFS+. The speeds I get with the HFS+ formatted ones are closer to what advertised. BOTH the APFS ones write speeds are worse what I’d get with mechanical drives…

Occasionally, I had trouble running the Disk Utility directly. In some case, running the Disk Utility from the stand-alone installer will work while running it under the full OS will not.

- Pie Lover

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.

I am using 2 external SSDs (Samsung 500GB T5) connected via USB 3.1 (Gen 2) to a Mac mini (2018). All the volumes are APFS. While I haven't experienced your exact issue, I did notice that it is taking much (longer compared to Big Sur) to mount the APFS volumes from external drives. I haven't measured the time, but I would estimate that all the volumes -- including encrypted Time Machine volumes -- mount within a few minutes.

- Pie Lover

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.

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

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.