Directly attached HDD vs NAS

[etaleb]

Well, the OWC is for extremely fast USB4 nvme SSDs. For spinning drives I have a wide variety of USB 3.1 enclosures; they all work well at their limited speeds and none of them disconnect or cause mouse problems like you reported. What version of Mac OS are you on? Also look at your activity monitor for any processes that might be using excessive cpu cycles or memory.

Activity monitor screenshots below, any thoughts? Top applications using 300-500mb are Safari tabs, Outlook, Evernote.

CPU - top apps using 2-8% are Safari, Activity monitor, Siri

 

[etaleb]

Hey folks, just wanted to close out this thread by posting what finally worked for me. I kept my Sabrent HDD enclosure but purchased a USB-C cable that's connected to the thunderbolt port now and it's been three days and not a single mouse cursor issue. I also still have all my older USB 2.0 cables connected to the WebCam, camera phone, etc. both to the MAC mini and also old Thunderbolt 27 monitorand have not seen any interference from those.