Facing USB-C drive recognition issues on iMac

My husband & I both upgraded to brand new Macs a month ago. They both have USB-C ports only, so I bought adapters. The adapters work fine in my husband’s new Mac & he has hooked up his backup disc etc. I have been fighting with the ports. None of my USB drives are recognized by this Mac.

I called Apple, & a Sr advisor spent at least 30 min with me; eventually we ended up on my husband’s new Mac which recognized all the drives. So we transferred the private docs file I had on my USB drive to his PC, with a view to copy it to a new USB-C drive.

I ordered a Sandisk USB-C drive & both PC’s recognized it. So today I plugged that new USB-C drive into his Mac, it recognized it & so I copied the private file onto it, deleted the private file off his Mac, & then ejected the new drive.

I then - plugged that USB-C drive into my Mac - & lo & behold, that private file was NOT on the drive. So I tried to redo the entire process on his Mac, by plugging the original USB drive into it & reinstalling the private file onto his PC again.

And guess what? Now HIS new Mac doesn’t recognize the old USB drive, even under Disk Utility. So now I can’t access that private file at all, anywhere.

I really wish I’d not bought the new Mac, honestly. My old Mac was 2019, 27 lovely inches (these new ones are 24 inches), it worked fine & all the various ports also worked. Now I’ve had nothing but issues & it’s really driving me completely insane. I spent another 30 mins with Western Digital this morning & no go.

I’ve now ordered APPLE adapters as a last resort. Apple has really perfected this; change all the ports to USB-C so that none of your older USB or passport drives can plug in, then potentially sell you 4 Apple 25.00 adapters.

Fingers crossed the new adapters work. If not, I’ll be returning this Mac but unfortunately I’ve already sold my old Mac, so I’m hooped. We were always an Apple family, with about 20 Apple devices. Maybe I’ll end up changing to a Windows PC because this really is ridiculous.

Fingers crossed.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]