External Hard Disk and Ventura

This has been occurring for myself quite frequently.

Just posting here to say that this time it happened - my external storage disconnecting on Ventura 13.3 - the storage is still visible in /Volumes but obviously is not actually mounted.

If I try to mount it again, the drive then shows up in /Volumes but with a "1" appended to the name.

Attached a screenshot for clarity, where I have mounted the storage volume again after it seemingly disconnected itself.

Is this just a thing that happens when a volume isn't correctly dismounted?

I am aware that this could be occurring due to a fault with my storage. However I am seeing many people having similar issues with their storage disconnecting randomly.

I can go days with no issues, and then one moment the drive spontaneously disconnects.

Hello LancasterHills,

To help isolate the issue, see if the disks are slept after inactivity when "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" setting in System Settings is disabled. Check out how to access that setting here: Set sleep and wake settings for your Mac - Apple Support

"Specify sleep and wake settings for a Mac notebook computer

1. On your Mac, choose Apple menu  > System Settings, then click Battery  in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.)
2. Click Options on the right, then do any of the following: 

• Put hard disks to sleep: Turn on “Put hard disks to sleep when possible.”
• Update your system while it’s asleep: Click the pop-up menu next to Enable Power Nap, then choose an option.
  • See What is Power Nap?
  • Allow your Mac to wake briefly so users can access shared services (if applicable): Click the pop-up menu next to “Wake for network access,” then choose an option."

If unrelated to the above setting, then disconnect any peripherals apart from wired input devices or a single extra monitor to further isolate the behavior.

If the issue continues, test after using First Aid via Disk Utility on the disks to help check and repair any issues: Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

Let us know if that helps.

Kind regards.

LancasterHills,

Thanks for keeping us updated on this issue. We'd like you to try a few more isolating steps so we can narrow down what is going on.

Since the issue is still happening in your test user account, we'll want to see if it persists when in safe mode.

How to use safe mode

Determine whether you're using a Mac with Apple silicon, then follow the appropriate steps:

Apple silicon

1. Shut down your Mac.

2. Turn on your Mac and continue to press and hold the power button until you see the startup options window.

3. Select your startup disk, then press and hold the Shift key while clicking “Continue in Safe Mode.”

4. Log in to your Mac. You might be asked to log in again.

Intel processor

1. Turn on or restart your Mac, then immediately press and hold the Shift key as your Mac starts up.

2. Release the key when you see the login window, then log in to your Mac. 

3. You might be asked to log in again. On either the first or second login window, you should see ”Safe Boot” in the upper-right corner of the window.

Once in safe mode, you'll want to follow the steps under if the issue persists there or not. You can check those out here: How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

Then, tell us, how are your external drives connected to your iMac? Have you had a chance to test this issue out with another cable? If not, that can provide us a bit more details on which component is likely to be causing this issue.

Let us know how those steps go and we'll plan our next steps then.

Take care!

First, there is no reason to ever install or run any 3rd party "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus, VPN or security apps on your Mac.  This documents describe what you need to know and do in order to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community and Recognize and avoid phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support.  

There are no known viruses, i.e. self propagating, for Macs.  There are, however, adware and malware which require the user to install although unwittingly most of the time thru sneaky links, etc.   

Anti Virus developers try to group all types as viruses into their ad campaigns of fear.  They do a poor job of the detecting and isolating the adware and malware.  Since there are no viruses these apps use up a lot of system resources searching for what is non-existent and adversely affect system and app performance.

There is one app, Malwarebytes, which was developed by a long time contributor to these forums and a highly respected member of the computer security community, that is designed solely to seek out adware and known malware and remove it.  The free version is more than adequate for most users.  

That being said, you've installed and run what most of the experienced contributors to these forums consider akin to malware: CleanMyMac.

Uninstall CMM according to the developer's instructions. You can check to see if you've removed all of the supporting files by downloading and running the shareware app Find Any File to search for any files with the application's or the developer's name in the file name.  For CMM software you'd do the following search(es): 

1 - Name contains cleanmymac

2 - Names contains macpaw

Any files that are found can be dragged from the search results window to the Desktop or Trash bin in the Dock for deletion.

FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages.  

a Ha! Lots to learn here: Identify the ports on your Mac - Apple Support Adapters for the Thunderbolt 4, Thunderbolt 3, or USB-C port on your Mac - Apple Support

However, the problem has NOT recurred on my MacBook Air M2 since Ventura 13.3.1

Thank you for trying those steps and keeping us posted on the issue, LancasterHills.

If the disks passed in First Aid, you'll want to manually eject and disconnect each drive. Once all drives are have been ejected and disconnected, connect only one drive, then click the Apple logo towards the top-left, followed by Restart in the menu. After the Mac restarts, log in to your user account to see if the issue persists.

If you continue to have issues, the next step is to create a new test admin user account, and log in to that user to see if the issue persists. You can find the steps for creating a new test user below and in the following article.

1. "Click the New Account pop-up menu (you may be asked to enter your password), then choose a type of account.

• Administrator: An administrator can add and manage other users, install apps, and change settings. The new user you create when you first set up your Mac is an administrator. Your Mac can have multiple administrators. You can create new ones, and convert standard users to administrators. Don’t set up automatic login for an administrator. If you do, someone could simply restart your Mac and gain access with administrator privileges. To keep your Mac secure, don’t share administrator names and passwords."

2.After creating the test user, click the Apple logo towards the top-left, followed by Sign Out in the menu.

3.Log in to the test user and see if the issue persists.

We look forward to the results!

I have a Seagate External Hard Drive.

The Drive intermittently disconnected on previous Mac OS versions. But now with Ventura it's a nightmare. I have to go through major gymnastics to get the drive to mount.

1. The drive system (drive, cable, power supply) seems OK. Proof: I hooked the drive system to my iMac2010 High Sierra. Mounted easily. Dismounted and remounted several times A-OK.
2. On my iMac2017 Ventura I disconnected EVERY USB device, as suggested. Great, the drive mounted and dismounted A-OK.
3. Then I added back in my LaCie 16 TB USB-C drive. When I dismounted the Seagate drive in Disk Utility a. it would not remount. Eventually I got several messages like this.

Could not mount “SG_AE2005_16_PHOTOS”. (com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error -119930874.)

So, then I disconnected the La Cie. I couldn't reconnect the Seagate, even after unplugging USB cable and Power.

I discovered one additional USB device connected, Zoom H4 USB Mike. I removed that. All I was left with was the Seagate Drive. Still no mount until I unplugged and replugged the drive USB and power. What a pain!

I tried unmounting and remounting. Unable to remount. Same error type. Drive dissappeardd from Disk Utility.

Could not mount “SG_AE2005_16_PHOTOS”. (com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error -119930874.)

I contacted Seagate and provided info reports from Disk Utility. They said the drive is OK. My test on the iMac2010 seems to confirm that. So, there is some crazy behaviour from my iMac. I tried much earlier resetting PRAM and SMC. I might try that again with all devices disconnected.

ANYTHING ELSE?

My iMac is 5K 27 inch 2017 Ventura 13.0.1

I ran First Aid on both the iMac 2010 and 2017 for the Seagate drive. No issues reported. And for the La Cie drive. No issues.

USB 3.0 Bus:

 Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBXHCISPT

 PCI Device ID: 0xa12f 

 PCI Revision ID: 0x0031 

 PCI Vendor ID: 0x8086 

Expansion Desk:

 Product ID: 0x331a

 Vendor ID: 0x0bc2 (Seagate LLC)

 Version: 9.11

 Serial Number: NA8FE6YR

 Speed: Up to 5 Gb/s

 Manufacturer: Seagate

 Location ID: 0x14c00000 / 12

 Current Available (mA): 900

 Current Required (mA): 8

 Extra Operating Current (mA): 0

  Vendor Name: Apple Inc.

 Device Name: iMac

 UID: 0x0001A0D6A8D9EF00

 Route String: 0

 Firmware Version: 41.5

 Domain UUID: 9B91A07B-91D6-5E50-95B3-7CCB2F1418E7

 Port:

 Status: No device connected

 Link Status: 0x101

 Speed: Up to 40Gb/s x1

 Current Link Width: 0x1

 Receptacle: 1

 Link Controller Firmware Version: 0.39.0

 Port:

 Status: No device connected

 Link Status: 0x101

 Speed: Up to 40Gb/s x1

 Current Link Width: 0x1

 Receptacle: 2

 Link Controller Firmware Version: 0.39.0

Try this. I'll explain later why.

Adjust the permissions on the disk and all partitions, so that you (ie me) and admin have read-write access to the partition and all enclosed items.

Instructions....

Select the partition.

Use Finder/File/Get Info

(alternative Select then Command with I)

Investigate Sharing Permissions

Unlock the lock at bottom right.

Ensure you give Read and Write Privilege to:

admin

yourself (me)

staff [not sure if that's needed]

everyone [Read only] [not sure if that's needed]

Select also

Tick Ignore ownership of this volume

Select three dots ...

Select Apply to encolosed items.

Reason this permissions fix might work

I found my disk had a jumble of permissions.

Example, One partition would could not even be selected on another computer ... That got me suspicious.

Different partitions had different read/write access.

And I suspect the top level r/w access was NOT inherited by all files within the partition.

Good luck with this!

I suspect there's an issue with Ventura and/or my iMac2017

The disk problems I have are with Ventura on iMac2017, and with my previous OS, but not so frequently.

Proof

I connected my drive to an iMac 2010 with High Sierra.

I mounted and dismounted several times. No issues

I copied 50 GB from the disk to the iMac SSD. That took 50 to 70 minutes. No issues with the copy.

Thus, I suspect something 'strange with either Ventura and/or my iMac2017. Not a disk or cable issue.

No, it means that you have some 3rd party software that is interfering with the Finder's ability to see all attached drives.

Download and run Etrecheck.  Copy and paste the results into your reply. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support  to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Copy the report

and use the Additional Text button to paste the report in your reply.

Then we can evaluate the report to see if we can determine the cause of the problem.

I have this problems too on my Mac Mini M1. I had to downgrade from Ventura to Monterey because my external disks keeps disconnecting even when I was copying files. The most random disconnect take place with my NVMe disk in USB-C case. I leave Ventura on second volume and use Monterey. I observe situation after updates, but Ventura 13.3 still nothing changes. They add emoji and other not important stuffs, but the most important things still not working properly. At least I'm sure that this is not hardware problem. I can not imagine how frustrated must be people that spent a lot money for Mac Studio and stuck with their work because of USB / Thunderbolt port.

On Ventura (13.2.1 (22D68)), the setting for putting hard disks to sleep is not there. The "Battery" setting appears in the menu but does not display anything at all, not even a blank panel. As you can see in the image, I had clicked "Screen Saver" then "Battery" - "Battery" is selected but the panel from "Screen Saver" is still displayed.

Further news.

I used Safe mode. It appears that I can both use the Seagate and LaCie drives without them causing issues.

I noticed my computer was behaving badly. For example, neither of my Bluetooth devices would work unless I wired them up through the USB-lightening charge cable.

I eventually realised that my SSD on the main iMac had just 40 GB of free storage, out of 500 GB total. So I cleared off some large files and moved an iMovie library elsewhere. Now I have 80 Gb of free space.

Now, back out of Safe Mode I find I can copy and move data from the Seagate to the LaCie drive. But the transfer rate appears slow. Eg copy takes 100 to 200 Mb/s whereas the drives are rated 5 GB/s (Seagate) and 50 Gb/s (La Cie. Why so slow?