USB key gets ejected when transferring files of roughly 400MB and above

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Level 1

4 points

USB key gets ejected when transferring files of roughly 400MB and above

I have a USB key that I put all my important files on from my old MAC. But when I transfer them to my new Mac mini, the USB key gets ejected every time it starts reading a file that is very large (usually video files).

At first I thought it was because it was drawing too much power from the USB port as the key does get warm. However, when I bought a mains powered USB hub and tried loading from that it does exactly the same.

Any ideas?

Mac mini, macOS 14.2

Posted on Feb 2, 2024 7:26 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 3, 2024 4:59 AM in response to Anteros_69

FWIW, in my years of experience with those Flash Drive/USB Sticks/USB Keys is that they should not be used for backup of important data. They also tend to "choke" when feeding them very large files by either slowing to a crawl or simply disconnecting as you are seeing.

You really should back up using a hard disk drive or an SSD drive which are much more reliable. Going cheap on backups is not a good idea as the backup device should be the most reliable part of the system.

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Answer 2

tbirdvet

Level 6

13,548 points

Feb 2, 2024 8:30 AM in response to Anteros_69

The USB drive draws very little power so that would not be the issue. How is the drive formatted (exFat or?). Fat32 can't handle large files so exFat is better or APFS.

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