Apple Mac mini m4 error: Disk Not Ejected Properly.

I disagree with the idea that there is "no" benefit from the sleep function on later Macs, even on my Mac Mini M4 Pro with the very latest hardware and OS. There is a benefit from the sleep function when you consider it places my OWC Express 1M2 in standby mode with the light off, going from feeling like a little space heater with the well designed heat sink doing its job, to sitting idle and cold to the touch. In this sleep state my UPS also reports the total system power, including my 27" Studio Display (on but asleep) is only one (1) Watt, going from 40+ watts when awake but idle! One watt, amazing! Everything is ready to go right after I wiggle my mouse and it wakes within 1-2 seconds, drives still mounted*. That is just too cool (no pun intended) to give up on, and how the hardware and software was engineered to work.

Having said all that, I agree that if you just can't get sleep to work as it should, it is not worth endless troubleshooting. It might make more sense to just disable sleep and let everything just draw whatever power it does and not worry about unnecessary component wear since this hardware is designed to last many years fully powered and running warm. You will upgrade before that anyway.

*As I mentioned in my other post, I did have some rare and random Drive Not Ejected Properly notifications after sleep but I think I may have resolved that now by fixing another possibly related issue I will also post about separately because others have been complaining about it. That is the issue of having a UPS (in my case an Eaton 5SC) connected by USB cable (for status reporting and auto shutdown by MAC OS) causing the Mac Mini M4 go to sleep and put external drives like the 1M2 asleep but wake up every few minutes, repeatedly. I suspect this constant sleep/wake every few min for hours with the external drive light going dark and blinking back/forth may lead to an eventual hiccup between the drive and OS. I noticed that by unplugging the USB cable to the UPS and just having it as a non-communicating power outlet, the Mac Mini and external drive would sleep peacefully and wake normally as expected. Then I found that if I connected an APC UPS (Back Ups Pro 1000 S) to the Mac Mini with the USB cable, the sleep functioning was still normal and now I still have the UPS status communication and auto shutdown capability. So I am now using the APC unit with no problems at all, no disk eject notifications after sleeping normally/consistently. I am disappointed that the Eaton 5SC was causing some issue with USB communication interfering with Mac Mini sleep because that is the UPS I wanted to keep using, but good for APC apparently having better communication compatibility with the Mac Mini and Sequoia.

I would be interested to know if anyone else has had this issue with UPSs with USB connections and sleep.