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All external drives I have, both powered and portable, are dropping off Mac Studio M1

I have a relatively new Mac Studio M1 purchased in December of 2022. Every single one of my mechanical external drives, and even an SSD drive that I have, lose its connection and icon off the desktop. Then I get the warning that a disc was not ejected properly. This can happen anywhere between a couple of minutes after starting up all the way to several hours after starting up. I know it's not the cables as these drives work perfectly on older systems without a hitch. This issue appears to be well documented. Has anybody contacted Apple and gotten an answer as far as when this issue should be corrected?


[Re-Titled by Moderator]


Mac Studio (2022)

Posted on Apr 1, 2023 7:51 AM

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Posted on May 5, 2023 11:17 AM

That’s hilarious! Is there a sticker on the drives that says "Does not behave badly"? If not how do you even know without Apple telling you which drives might work? All my drives/cables have worked just fine on everything BUT my Mac Studio. So, no, this is directly on Apple.

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10 replies

May 16, 2023 9:22 PM in response to DemandAccountability

I stopped trying to get the drives to work. Fact is, they worked fine until I got the M1 Mac Studio now they dont. I installed the Amphetamine app. It works for the time being. I choose "indefinite" session length from the top app menu and it has worked great so far. I agree that an App to fix a system issue is silly.

I hope Apple addresses this. It is a pain.

Being an audio engineer as well, there is so much to consider with all THAT software and the issues with system updates and compatibility. It makes your head spin.

Apr 7, 2023 5:33 AM in response to AmedeoCiminnisi

This is a wide spread problem in the OS. My OWC thunderbay 4 with a thunderbolt4 to a thunderbolt3 adaptor always unmounts after random lengths of time.

The only solution I've found is to install an app called Amphetamine which keeps the drive mounted by doing a random read at a fixed interval. The prob is that your computer will never go to sleep so you'll need to shut down/ boot up every time. Hope Apple figures this out soon.

Apr 7, 2023 4:54 PM in response to AmedeoCiminnisi

If this happens when the Mac is awake and not sleeping then it still may be a cable issue. I had two drives that worked fine on my older Mac but with my new Mac Studio and new Mac Mini M1 they would drop off. I went through several cables before I go a robust connection. With one drive I got an official Apple cable that was rock solid. These later Macs and latest OS seem very finicky.

May 13, 2023 11:12 PM in response to AmedeoCiminnisi

I remember when I first got my Mac Studio in April 2022 I was having similar issues with my hard drives. It seemed to occur after I'd put the Mac into sleep mode and then woken it up, the drives just wouldn't stay awake. Since then I changed my spinning hard drives for SSDs and I never put the Mac into sleep mode, I just leave it on 24/7 and I don't experience any external hard drive issues any more.

May 16, 2023 9:06 PM in response to AmedeoCiminnisi

I'm not sure if this is the same issue, but it seems to me that ever since I installed this latest version (12.6.5) I have had to wait for ALL of my external drives to spin up before things like Open... or Save... dialogue boxes will work. I used to only have to wait for the one drive in particular that I was working on (or in the case of saving, it would still show all of the mounted drives, and only when I chose a sleeping drive would that one drive spin up... now I don't even see the list of mounted drives until they have all spun up, even if I want to save a file to my internal SSD drive).


Also, I doesn't feel right that the accepted answer is to use some 3rd party software. There absolutely appears to have been some kind of change with this latest OS release, and it is frustrating the he-ll out of me. Have you experienced this all-at-once spin-up issue too?

All external drives I have, both powered and portable, are dropping off Mac Studio M1

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