Time Machine failures/external drive keeps disconnecting with Ventura 13.4
I have a 1 TB LaCie mobile drive I use as backup for my i5 MacBook Air. I've backed it up with Time Machine many times in the past few years, but it's been quite awhile - over 100 days - and now that I decided I was annoyed with the reminder popup and decided to back it up today, my drive keeps randomly disconnecting so I can't complete the backup!
I plug in the drive, run Time Machine and select "backup now," and I can see it start working. After a few minutes, it disconnects the drive. I get the notification popup that says "Disk not ejected properly," but I didn't turn it off or try to eject it.
I tried both USB-C ports, restarted MacBook twice - and I updated the OS to Ventura 13.4 today, but this issue occurred right before I updated the OS, too (previously was on 13.3.3). Since my computer is an SSD, I don't have the option to disable disks from going to sleep, but my computer is plugged in right now, anyway.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 13.4