Ventura auto ejects connected external drives.

Hello, I have a Mac mini M2 pro and so far I have no complaints besides the fact that it keeps ejecting any external drive I plug into the usb-c ports (whether directly or through a hub). I have done some tests and this is what I have gathered so far:


  • peripherals such as mouse, keyboard, display, work perfectly (which makes me exclude it is a hardware problem)
  • usb-a ports on the Mac mini work just as expected with both peripherals and external drives
  • the hub I have connected to the usb-c port on the Mac mini has a usb-a 2.0 port, which is the only one capable of keeping the connection to the external drives
  • if I use the usb-a 3.0, the card slot, or the usb-c ports (of the hub) the external drive ejects itself to then reconnect in an infinite loop, just like the usb-c ports on the Mac mini.


The volumes I used were not formatted with Apple file system, so I have no idea if that changes anything. Either way, a USB port is a USB port and it should keep the connection active regardless of the file system I choose to use.


Has anybody experienced the same issue? Did anybody find a solution? Has anybody some tips to share? My best bet is that Ventura has serious bugs and this is just another one but I can't be sure, also I need a solution, so it would be helpful to know if I can keep wasting my time trying to find it or just deal with it until Apple decides to fix this issue.


Had an appointment with the genius bar but they couldn't understand what the problem is either (or maybe didn't want to admit how faulty the OS is right now).


Thank you in advance for your answers, have a nice day :)

Mac mini, macOS 13.4

Posted on Apr 29, 2023 7:09 AM

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15 replies

Apr 30, 2023 4:48 PM in response to twenty1sticazzi

Thanks for posting in the Apple Support Communities twenty1sticazzi,


The following specifically addresses USB issues you might encounter on your Mac, and may provide a solution:


If a USB device isn’t working properly, make sure it’s connected to your computer correctly, is plugged into a power outlet if it has a power cord, and has any necessary software installed.

* Check the power, port, and cable connections: Make sure the USB device is turned on and its cables are properly connected. If your computer has more than one USB port , switch the device’s cable to another port. If you still can’t use the device, contact the manufacturer for more information.
* If you can use the device after switching ports, connect another device to the first port. If you can’t use this device, shut down the computer and unplug it from the power outlet. Wait about a minute, then plug it back into the power outlet and start up your computer.
* If you still can’t use a device with the port, your computer may need to be serviced. See Find out how to service or repair your Mac.
* Check for missing software: Make sure you installed the latest software for your device. Visit the manufacturer’s website for any updates.
* Check the USB hub: If the device is connected to a USB hub, make sure the device and the hub are the same speed. Connect USB 3.0 SuperSpeed devices to a USB 3.0 SuperSpeed HUB, USB 2.0 Hi-Speed devices to a USB 2.0 Hi-Speed hub, and so on.
* If the device doesn’t have a power cord and is plugged into another USB device that doesn’t have a power cord: Try plugging the device directly into your computer’s USB port  or into a USB device that does have a power cord. You might need to disconnect and reconnect the other device as well, if it has stopped responding.
* If you have many devices connected to your Mac: Disconnect all USB devices except the device you’re testing, an Apple keyboard, and an Apple mouse. Make sure that the device is connected directly to the computer, and that any hubs or extension cables are disconnected. If you can use the device now, the problem may be with one of the other USB devices or hubs you had connected to your computer. Try reconnecting them, one by one, to your computer. When you find the device causing the problem, review its documentation for further troubleshooting steps.
* Verify that the device appears in System Information: On your Mac, press and hold the Option key, then choose Apple menu  > System Information.
* In the window that appears, see if the USB device is listed below Hardware in the list on the left. If the device appears but does not work, review the device’s documentation for further troubleshooting steps.
* Reopen apps: Quit and reopen any apps that use the device.
* Restart your Mac: Choose Apple menu  > Restart.

If a USB device doesn’t work with Mac


We hope this helps!


May 2, 2023 1:37 AM in response to Charles Palenz

Apple OS reads also NFTS file system, can’t write on it but for sure it’s capable of mounting the drive and read its content. I don’t remember what file system my drives are formatted with, for sure not Apple’s, probably NTFS. It doesn’t make any difference though since my MacBook Air is capable of mounting them and keeping the connection while the Mac mini apparently can’t (if not plugged into the usb-a port). Basically the usb-c ports array is good only for peripherals and not volumes at the time being.

Jun 30, 2023 10:11 AM in response to mikeg28806

Not helpful. I have a MacBook Pro M1 and it randomly ejects all external drives on all usb ports (never using a hub). I have a LaCie rugged drive and a couple of SanDisk SSD's - all of them using APFS. It happens when the machine/drive is active & in use, it also happens when the drive(s) are not in use. It happens when the machine is awake, it happens when it's asleep. I've used the drives on all different USB ports and multiple cables. This is NOT an external drive mechanical or external drive firmware problem (it happens on multiple brand/types of drives). This is clearly a MacOS (Ventura) problem. I also notice that the menu options to prevent putting disks to sleep while sleeping is gone. I've changed the battery setting that says put hard disks to sleep when possible to Never (although I've tried every setting). I see tons of people out there with the same problem. TIme for Apple to step up and fix this.

Aug 16, 2023 9:16 AM in response to jdasmh

Yeah, figured I'd add to the chorus here, 15" MacBook Air M2 just randomly disconnects external USB-C drives, regardless of cable, port, hub/no hub, drive format, etc. Sometimes it even disconnects them 2-3 times within the space of a few seconds before they auto-reconnect, and sometimes they do not reconnect at all, requiring a restart and even Disk Utility to repair the drives at times. Used these drives with other MacBooks and Mac minis and I have never seen anything like this, other than back in the late 1990s when you didn't terminate the SCSI chain properly ;-) Hope Apple drops in on these forums occasionally and is aware of the issue.

Sep 1, 2023 2:21 PM in response to Godzila

Hey, I don't know if this is going to be a magic bullet for anyone, but I decided to check my log files right after my external storage drive was dis onnected by the OS for the umpteenth time, and I saw a lof of references to mdworker, aka Spotlight indexing. So I disabled the Spotlight indexing on all my external drives, except my Time Machine drive since you CAN'T disable the index on that. However, you can turn off Automatic Backups in your settings, then drag the TM drive to the Privacy area in Spotlight to turn off the indexing and delete the .Spotlight-V100 directory, then drag it out of there and turn TM back on, which should force a rebuild of the index file. You can do all this in Terminal too, I'm just too lazy to check on the commands for that ;-) But this is the first time I haven't had constant drive ejections that sometime happened literally less then five minutes after a reboot, and then again and again and again throughout the day to the point where the directory needed repair. It has now been alost 48 hours without a single spontaneous disconnection of any external drive, and I can't remember the last time things were "normal" like that. YMMV, and I have not re-enabled Spotlight on any of my external drives since I don't need to search those anyway, but maybe just purging the .Spotlight-V100 directory and then letting it rebuild will still be OK.

Sep 21, 2023 12:57 PM in response to wardienet

I have a related problem. I'm running Ventura on an M2 Mac Studio. All drives stay mounted and stable EXCEPT the backup drive that is used by Time Machine. It is a Crucial P3 Plus Gen4 NVMe SSD in a Hagibis USB-C Hub enclosure that sits nicely atop the Mac Studio. The drive was formatted by the Mac Studio disk utility. All thru ports on the hub work properly with no connected drive ejection. However, the enclosed Time Machine drive routinely ejects spontaneously and the hub must be unplugged from the Mac Studio and replugged to remount. I can then do a backup manually, but the drive will shortly dismount and remain so until I unplug and replug again.


Sep 21, 2023 4:43 PM in response to FN Studio

I had thought my earlier "fix" of disabling Spotlight did the trick, but it was only a temporary fix ;-( What I did discover, however, was that recent versions of Mac OS, or maybe it's just Apple Silicon Macs, DO NOT like external NVMe drives. After a lot more experimenting, I ended up ditching all my external NVMes and going back to either 2.5" conventional spinning plater drives or 2.5" SATA SSDs, and since I made that switch about two weeks ago, I have not had a single random ejection of an external drive. I reattached a couple of my NVMes yesterday morning just as a test and things went right back to ejection ****. So, your mileage may vary, but if you are having this issue and you are using NVMe drives in USB-C enclosures, you might want to try a Thunderbolt enclosure instead, even if you don't need that level of performance, or maybe spend a lot more than I did on the external enclosures (I have four of them, all were in the $15-20 price range including the cable), so maybe quality is a factor as well. Still, I am pretty sure that this was not an issue prior to my getting an M2 MacBook Air.

Sep 21, 2023 7:16 PM in response to gilpoulsen

Thanks gilpoulsen for your insight. Interesting. I have 2 other NVMe drives, same brand and capacity as the one that will not stay mounted, that are paired in a USB-c enclosure and they never spontaneously eject. I'm wondering if it is either (A) a problem with the Hagbis USB-c hub, or (B) could it be that the Time Machine app has a problem remaining engaged with NVMe drives?

Sep 22, 2023 2:23 AM in response to gilpoulsen

Nice update. I definitely think there is USB bus weirdness going on here. I too found the spotlight thing didn't really fix anything long term. I'm not using NVMe drives but have been using a collection of external SATA HDD, SDD directly or via hubs. What I found from looking at repeat incidents is that my Mac wasn't liking a particular USB 3 Hub - in fact an active extension cable. It seems to bizarrely go through three stages of cr*pness:

  1. The hub itself went offline, taking out the drive at the other end.
  2. The whole USB 3.0 Bus it was on went offline - so also taking out the other USB-C TB3 port associated with the same Bus and whatever happened to be on that. (I believe they are in physical pairs on the machine's ports, back of a MM2018)
  3. Kernel panic eventually. Bad. Hard to decipher stack trace.

I'm trying our various other solutions to get something stable just with SATA drives right now. Really shouldn't have to be this hard...

Sep 25, 2023 8:01 AM in response to wardienet

So... I had been OK with this, using a single external 2.5" SSD (APFS w/two volumes, one Time Machine) rather than NMVe drives, but I did have one hiccup the other day where the drive(s) just vanished, no message of any kind, and only returned after a reboot. When they vanish, they vanish, not in System Profiler, not in Disk Utility, even if they are still connected. It's more like they are being "erased" from the USB bus entirely with no trace, more than simply being unmounted, in which case the drive would still appear in Disk Utility, and on the USB bus. That was Friday, and it's been OK since then even with a great deal of use over the weekend.

Oct 3, 2023 12:21 PM in response to gilpoulsen

I just wonder if this is an issue with TimeMachine compatibility with this drive set up. I thought I might try using Amphetamine to tickle the drive awake, but with TimeMachine assigned to that drive it becomes inaccessible as far as any other apps writing to it. I may test this hypothesis by reformatting the drive and stop with the TimeMachine and use SuperDuper as my back as I have in the past. Then I should know if it's a software issue or and OS issue.

Ventura auto ejects connected external drives.

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