Does Monterey Have a Bug with Mounting External Drives & Images?

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I had a few hours of excitement with 12.5 today as my external 2-drive HDD RAID that "unexpectedly ejects" remained actively connected for perhaps TWICE as long as my previous experiences of up to about 3 hours max.

I wanted to give it a night and tomorrow to see if this was a fluke or perhaps the problem was actually solved... at last!

Unfortunately, on a new check just now, the drive was gone (ejected). What was different with 12.5 vs. all previous versions of Monterey was that it didn't give me the "unexpected ejection" notification. So it appears Apple may have coded something to NOT show the ejection message without fixing whatever is causing the ejection.

I'd much prefer to fix the core issue than hide notification about the core issue.

Here's hoping for 12.6 or Ventura. I miss "just works" Apple.

Next day update: Notification popped the NEXT day, long after the disc was no longer visible in Finder, Disk Utility or anything else...

🎼 Hello ejection, my old friend...
it's not nice of you AGAIN...
because the os updates are ticking...
but this bug is not licking... 🎶
and the meaning of the U in USB...
seems lost on thee...........
within the code... of Monterey. 🎵

 

[Alvin777]

I can tell you how you will most likely actually get it fixed, and it does not involve upgrading to any beta OS, but it does involve rebuilding your user home directory. Here is how I did it:

1. Go to "Users and Groups" under System Preferences
2. Click the padlock to unlock
3. Right-click on your account having the issue
4. Choose "Advanced Options..."
5. On the line labeled "Home directory" select "Choose"
6. When Finder comes up, go up one level so you're in "Users" and not in your home directory. From there just create a new folder and choose that folder. For me I called it "<username>.delete" where <username> is my actual account name.

After changing it causes your system to reboot. Then you can rename your old user folder to <username>.keep. You can do this once more to create a folder called <username>.

In summary, you'll have

<username>.delete
<username>.keep
<username>

You can delete the one called "<username>.delete" and keep the original (<username>.keep) as a backup until you restore all of your needed files. You might even put it on an external drive.

Sounds painful, but yo probably have years or decades of old preferences and add-ons, some might be obsolete Finder extensions causing Finder to have issues.

Anyway, I hope this help...

Thanks. I haven't been able to backup everything since Monterey's release last October (taking great risk with no backup for almost a year now) but this seems to be the solution but there's only one way to find out, may Bl. Carlo Acutis intercede.

 

[Alvin777]

I can tell you how you will most likely actually get it fixed, and it does not involve upgrading to any beta OS, but it does involve rebuilding your user home directory. Here is how I did it:

1. Go to "Users and Groups" under System Preferences
2. Click the padlock to unlock
3. Right-click on your account having the issue
4. Choose "Advanced Options..."
5. On the line labeled "Home directory" select "Choose"
6. When Finder comes up, go up one level so you're in "Users" and not in your home directory. From there just create a new folder and choose that folder. For me I called it "<username>.delete" where <username> is my actual account name.

After changing it causes your system to reboot. Then you can rename your old user folder to <username>.keep. You can do this once more to create a folder called <username>.

In summary, you'll have

<username>.delete
<username>.keep
<username>

You can delete the one called "<username>.delete" and keep the original (<username>.keep) as a backup until you restore all of your needed files. You might even put it on an external drive.

Sounds painful, but yo probably have years or decades of old preferences and add-ons, some might be obsolete Finder extensions causing Finder to have issues.

Anyway, I hope this help...

I'm in the User folder, I tried creating a new folder to be renamed into <username>.delete but it won't allow a new folder to be created nor be able to rename my current into <username>.delete. I seem to only be able to duplicate it. Do you need to be logged in on Safe Mode? Thank you.

 

[Alvin777]

I can tell you how you will most likely actually get it fixed, and it does not involve upgrading to any beta OS, but it does involve rebuilding your user home directory. Here is how I did it:

1. Go to "Users and Groups" under System Preferences
2. Click the padlock to unlock
3. Right-click on your account having the issue
4. Choose "Advanced Options..."
5. On the line labeled "Home directory" select "Choose"
6. When Finder comes up, go up one level so you're in "Users" and not in your home directory. From there just create a new folder and choose that folder. For me I called it "<username>.delete" where <username> is my actual account name.

After changing it causes your system to reboot. Then you can rename your old user folder to <username>.keep. You can do this once more to create a folder called <username>.

In summary, you'll have

<username>.delete
<username>.keep
<username>

You can delete the one called "<username>.delete" and keep the original (<username>.keep) as a backup until you restore all of your needed files. You might even put it on an external drive.

Sounds painful, but yo probably have years or decades of old preferences and add-ons, some might be obsolete Finder extensions causing Finder to have issues.

Anyway, I hope this help...

Hi. I tried making a new folder but even on Safe Mode, macOS Monterey doesn't let you, there's no way to "rebuild" the Home directory in this way. Let's deeply hope, pray & deeply fast, Apple's seen and heard this problem and fixes it in macOS Ventura (but if someone has already tried it with the latest beta and it still doesn't work, hopefully, you can make a partition for Ventura, boot there and manually drag and drop each documents, archives images like .dmg, zip, .cdr, .iso and te like, images (photos) and videos if one does not have iCloud 1TB or more backed up which makes me think, we need remote backups too, remote as the cloud (someday may be higher than actual clouds in space w/ Elon's Starlink )

 

[WinterWolf90]

I formatted my older MacBook Air (early 2020 intel) after I bought the m2. I downgraded the software to Catalina and used the same Anker port with the two hard drives that would disconnect and error out previously and had ZERO trouble copying or moving files. This is totally a Monterey issue. I may try and download the Ventura beta later to see if I have any issues with the drive on it. I have not tried to use the drives on the new Mac m2.

 

[Alvin777]

I formatted my older MacBook Air (early 2020 intel) after I bought the m2. I downgraded the software to Catalina and used the same Anker port with the two hard drives that would disconnect and error out previously and had ZERO trouble copying or moving files. This is totally a Monterey issue. I may try and download the Ventura beta later to see if I have any issues with the drive on it. I have not tried to use the drives on the new Mac m2.

This is true, the USBs are all detected and mounts without problems on Windows Boot Camp. Sometimes it mounts whenever I uninstall something (or do something on Terminal) like an anti-virus that has connection with external drives. It mounted awhile after that but now it's gone again.

May it all be fixed in the next update of Monterey and beyond.

 

[ozone]

Well, I see I have company. I updated my MBAirM1 to Monterey 12.5 today. I then tried to install Pargaon NTFS for Mac (which has run tremendously on my old 2016 MBPro). I followed the rather arcane instructions for the M1 installation, and it installed, but it could not read my Samsung T5 NTFS formatted external drives... which again, worked great on my older 2016 MBPro. I went to Paragon's site, and they have 10 (!) things you can try. I got to item 7 and gave up, and that included reinstalling the app. Nothing worked.

So, I figured why fight it... I took one of the SSD drives, reformatted it for Mac (journaled), and tried to transfer the files. No luck. What? My Mac won't even recognize it. It flashed briefly for 15 seconds as mounted on one attempt, but it disappeared. It doesn't show up in the Finder, in Disk Utility, no where. At the start, I would get a "Your disk is not recognized" message... now I don't even get that (sad).

I then tried mounting a regular USB thumb drive just to see if it would be recognized, and after the second attempt, it worked. But I just cannot mount any of my larger SSD drives, even if it's formatted for Mac.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Maybe I'll just go back to Big Sur, or gasp, use a Windows machine (sigh).

EDIT: It was the CABLE! Moral of the story... use the latest cables. (even bigger sigh)

 

[Alvin777]

Well, I see I have company. I updated my MBAirM1 to Monterey 12.5 today. I then tried to install Pargaon NTFS for Mac (which has run tremendously on my old 2016 MBPro). I followed the rather arcane instructions for the M1 installation, and it installed, but it could not read my Samsung T5 NTFS formatted external drives... which again, worked great on my older 2016 MBPro. I went to Paragon's site, and they have 10 (!) things you can try. I got to item 7 and gave up, and that included reinstalling the app. Nothing worked.

So, I figured why fight it... I took one of the SSD drives, reformatted it for Mac (journaled), and tried to transfer the files. No luck. What? My Mac won't even recognize it. It flashed briefly for 15 seconds as mounted on one attempt, but it disappeared. It doesn't show up in the Finder, in Disk Utility, no where. At the start, I would get a "Your disk is not recognized" message... now I don't even get that (sad).

I then tried mounting a regular USB thumb drive just to see if it would be recognized, and after the second attempt, it worked. But I just cannot mount any of my larger SSD drives, even if it's formatted for Mac.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Maybe I'll just go back to Big Sur, or gasp, use a Windows machine (sigh).

Hi. I got it somehow to mount my USB externals just last week (it's like a mushroom, it surprises you and mounts when you least expect it), I can't remember the sequence of steps, I removed everything's that's plugged (perhaps even the external speakers) I think I reset the SMC first then PRAM then booted to safe mode then used Cocktail, Onyx app (all checked, not the default settings of what they need to do, including caches) and First Aid on Disk Utility (starting from Volume, Container and then the disk itself) and then did a SMC reset then PRAM reset, then rebooted to the regular macOS Montery without anything plugged in at the back, then waited until everything's fully loaded with no app opened (I clicked don't reopen the apps before shutting down) and for good measure, still nothing plugged, I did the First Aid on Disk Utility again, starting with the Volume, Containter and then the Disk itself.

I figured if there are a lot of things plugged in the Mac on boot up, Monterey somehow gets confused and not mount things.

I closed Disk Utility (no app opened, I think I even switched Off the Wifi and uninstalled or disabled any app that starts up at boot time, though I've already installed the latest Monterey on a fresh install before on a new volume which I partition from the free space on the same Mac but that fresn install still didn't mount the external drives and even images like .dmg .iso .cdr) and then first powered up the USB hub where any SATA external drive can be plugged in and then plugged it's USB cable to the Mac, I plugged the flashdrive first to this hub coz' I thought flashdrives are simple to mount- praise be bestfriends Jesus, Mother Mary & St. Joseph (that's the feeling when it mounts by chance), it mounted. I then ejected the flashdrive, switched off the hub while its USB cable is still plugged and then plugged by Time Machine disk which has been in the storage for a long time and then that mounted as well.

I had to shutdown again I remember coz' I had to uninstall things and delete files coz' Time Machine or macOS says the space for Time Machine's too small (also the main Volume was displaying the wrong free space and Used in the Get Info) and when I rebooted, it won't mount again.

This could have been any combination of these steps coz' I was just trying everything because I need to backup my data, it's been almost a year it's not been backed by Time Machine coz' it can't mount any external drive. These trial and error took a lot of time, I figured I'll just wait for the next Monterey update or Ventura coz' I can't afford to do a trail and error again (whose sequence I forgot).

Thanks, may we mount our external drives soon and get to back up.

 

[ozone]

Thanks! Unbelievably... I found the culprit. I was at my desk, and thought... what if I connected a hub, and then plugged the external SSD into the hub using a high speed USB-C to USB-A cable. Just for a change. I figured it would make no difference. But it did! The culprit was the CABLE. I had been inadvertantly using older USB-C cables that of course worked on the much older USB-C ports of my old MBPro, but would not work given the SSD and newer ports on my MBAir M1.

So, everything works now, including Paragon NTFS, and all external drives are recognized. Can't believe how much time I wasted just because of the cable...

 

[WinterWolf90]

Thanks! Unbelievably... I found the culprit. I was at my desk, and thought... what if I connected a hub, and then plugged the external SSD into the hub using a high speed USB-C to USB-A cable. Just for a change. I figured it would make no difference. But it did! The culprit was the CABLE. I had been inadvertantly using older USB-C cables that of course worked on the much older USB-C ports of my old MBPro, but would not work given the SSD and newer ports on my MBAir M1.

So, everything works now, including Paragon NTFS, and all external drives are recognized. Can't believe how much time I wasted just because of the cable...

What kind of cables were you using that were older? I bought a USB C to external HD cable and even on Monterey it would error out. When I used the hard drive on a windows computer I did not have any problems either.

 

[ozone]

What kind of cables were you using that were older? I bought a USB C to external HD cable and even on Monterey it would error out. When I used the hard drive on a windows computer I did not have any problems either.

I think they might have been the original USB-C cable(s) that came with or that I bought around the time I first got my 2016 MBPro. I think the hub and cable I just used which worked are at least gen 3.1. I think. I just ordered some Thunderbolt 4 cables off Amazon. Hopefully that will cover almost every situation I can think of. Most of my USB cables are at least several years old.

 

[nicozagi]

Hey there,

I would like to join your conversation regarding this problem. I have read a lot posts in this thread but not all as it got quite long.

I'm having the same problems, sort of... I updated to Monterey from Mojave and ever since I get random ejects, all USB-A ports, and bluetooth stop working.

I tried a few things and came to the following conclusion: APFS formatted hard drives that are connected via USB-C work fine and don't trouble bluetooth no matter if they are SSDs oder HDDs.

I have a 4TB HDD and a 1TB SSD hooked to my iMac 27, 2017. Since the 4TB HDD has a USB-C cable everything works fine.

However, I still have a partition of Mojave because I'm still using some 32bit Apps that I haven't replaced yet. For this partition, I got a HDD to Backup certain folders. The drive is formatted as "Mac OS Extended Journaled."
When booting in Monterey and this hard drive is connected, the OS will just eject all external drives after a few minutes. I've tried USB-A and USB-C plus putting USB-C dongles in between – no luck.

In conclusion, HDDs (and most likely SSDs as well) formatted as Mac OS Extended Journaled are the culprit for my system. When this hard drive is disconnected everything works fine as long as I connect the APFS hard drives via USB-C.

Now this is annoying because I need to plug the Mojave Backup drive in and out every time but surely better than no external drives at all.

On another note: I installed Ventura on a partition today to see if Apple fixed this issue: NO

My guess is that Apple will just wait until we all use APFS formatted drives and USB-C.


If you got other ideas to fix this I'm all ears and I hope that my post might help someone out there. ✌️

 

[kibepo73]

When you connect an external hard drive on Mac, it will show up on Desktop, Finder, and Disk Utility. But sometimes the external drive won’t appear on any of these places. To fix the issue, you can try the below methods:

1. Change macOS settings
2. Reset Mac firmware settings
3. Fix external hard drive connectivity issue
4. Repair external hard drive using disk utility

Hope it helps!

 

[AlumaMac]

Yes, it does. Brand new MBP and 2 different reliable USB drives randomly disconnect. One of them will no longer mount in Monterey (can see in Disk Utility but get an error when trying to mount), but mounts fine in Catalina.

 

[RHammer]

Try changing the cables to to a heavy duty thunderbolt 4 compatible cables. Works for me.

 

[WinterWolf90]

Try changing the cables to to a heavy duty thunderbolt 4 compatible cables. Works for me.

ive tried the hard drive to usb c cable and the same thing still happens.

 

[RHammer]

ive tried the hard drive to usb c cable and the same thing still happens.

Not all USB C cables are 40gb compatible.

 

[83n7am1n]

Jumping in here with a similar problem (I think) on my 2019 Mac Pro using an internal 4 TB PCIe drive set up with Apple Raid and APFS.

Ever since the 12.5 (and now on 12.5.1) update I've been having problems. Have tried SMC, PRAM and I'm finding files are no longer being findable in their original location in certain plugins. Weirdly, the culprit seems, to me at least, to be quite obvious. When viewing get info on the drive, and looking at Name & Extension there is a "1" appended to the drive name. This would certainly explain why files aren't being found.

E.g /Drive Name 1 instead of /Drive Name

The drive name on the desktop does not have the appended "1".

Within disk utility, under RAID Sets the parent drive shows up as "Not Mounted" (despite all files being accessible) and when I click the child drive (under the Container disk one) the mount point shows the "1" appended on the name of the drive name.

Further, when I try to run first Aid on the parent drive in disk utility it throws up errors (see attachment).

Please help - unable to work!

 

[Alvin777]

Hi. Let's deeply pray, fast & hope, this is not Apple's way of force obsolescence (deliberately crippling things like that iPhone CPUgate issue) so that everybody is forced to switch to newer faster external Thunderbolt drives and hopefully Apple is not deliberately mounting the old external drives and sometimes mounting it (like a slot machine). Sometimes when I shutdown or restart either to do SMC reset and/or PRAM or boot to Boot Camp Windows, the external USB drive would mount but it's not consistent. If Apple is deliberately crippling it, this could be called the 'USBgate' :-D . This would be sad coz' I've not backed up things for 11 months now, no Time Machine or even a cloner to the external drive.

It always mounts on Boot Camp Windows though, also when I use High Sierra which is for me the most stable, most reliable, most problem free OS in  history but it may not be as secure when it comes to malware (maybe disconnect the internet when using older macOSes). Other macOSes before Monterey would most likely have no external drive mounting issues.

What I don't get is it still won't mount even with a fresh install of macOS Monterey (created a partition for a freshly installed Monterey before, for testing) and some have tested macOS Ventura won't either.

I bet those with Thunderbolt 1 to 3 external drives don't have this inconsistent external drive mounting problems even if their disk is slow compared to newer SSDs or hardisks.

I'll try to find a Thunderbolt/MiniPort Display to USB adapter, coz' if Ventura won't mount the old external drives via USB (unless this also happens to Thunderbolt external drives), there's little hope this was fixed (if at all) in Ventura or build a DIY NAS via the ethernet port to back this up already but it's sad again this'll all take time, time away from productive things that matter more.

 

[Alvin777]

My problem only started this morning, after upgrading to Monterey in March. I updated today, it did not fix the problem. All of the drives worked flawlessly yesterday and don't today (still). Now I'm regretting buying my recent Macbook. I'm just done. My local backup is now useless, and I can't restore or revert anything without being able to connect a drive.

Can I whine any more. *sigh*

I hope Apple fixes all these in the next Monterey & Ventura updates. I use FastDMG app to mount images like .dmg (drag the image like .dmg to the icon of the app, in the Dock). The app won't mount non-mounting external drives though, I hope the FastDMG developer creates one that force mounts the external drives (I think I emailed him about that).

 

[Menthol]

Could I ask someone to clarify whether or not this problem affects Intel Macs as well as M1's? I would like to update my 2020 Intel iMac to Monterey but I have a bunch of external hard drives, some connected (via USB-A) directly and some via a CalDigit hub, and I do *not* want to run into this issue.

Thanks.

 

[Alvin777]

Hi, I've read posts in this thread that have issues too with the  Silicon Macs (I guess both Intel and  Silicon seem to be affected but check again the pages in this thread, I just skimmed them and may have misread it).

 

[83n7am1n]

Jumping in here with a similar problem (I think) on my 2019 Mac Pro using an internal 4 TB PCIe drive set up with Apple Raid and APFS.

Ever since the 12.5 (and now on 12.5.1) update I've been having problems. Have tried SMC, PRAM and I'm finding files are no longer being findable in their original location in certain plugins. Weirdly, the culprit seems, to me at least, to be quite obvious. When viewing get info on the drive, and looking at Name & Extension there is a "1" appended to the drive name. This would certainly explain why files aren't being found.

E.g /Drive Name 1 instead of /Drive Name

The drive name on the desktop does not have the appended "1".

Within disk utility, under RAID Sets the parent drive shows up as "Not Mounted" (despite all files being accessible) and when I click the child drive (under the Container disk one) the mount point shows the "1" appended on the name of the drive name.

Further, when I try to run first Aid on the parent drive in disk utility it throws up errors (see attachment).

Please help - unable to work!
View attachment 2045997 View attachment 2045996

My issue at least has now been fixed.

Had a long chat with someone from Apple about this today and found the culprit.

In updating Monterey, and remounting the RAID drive there was some kind of error.

When viewing /Volumes in finder I could see my renamed drive with the appended 1, containing all my files, but also a second folder with my original (and correct) drive name, which was 0 bytes and contained nothing.

Deleting that folder, and restarting has made the drive remount in its original location.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Update to "unexpected ejection" problem with Silicon Mac running Monterey (but no issue through the same cable on Intel Macs running macOS < Big Sur)...

Latest Monterey updated and that enclosure that would not stay mounted has remained connected for about 17 hours now. That's 14 more than it has ever remained connected before to my Silicon Mac Ultra.

It appears that Apple finally got around to debugging Monterey USB port management and MAY have brought the U in USB back into play. Assuming this isn't a wildly successful fakeout, it looks like the problem in my case was indeed buggy Monterey.

Those of you with select enclosures having the "unexpected ejection" problem might want to give them a fresh test with this newest version. Maybe you'll get lucky too.

 

[Brian33]

Thank you, @HobeSoundDarryl , for your report! I assume you mean that you installed the Monterey 12.6 update.

I know you've had a lot of these unexpected ejections. Mine are much, much, less frequent than yours, which makes the issue harder to troubleshoot. I haven't updated to 12.6 yet, but this gives me reason to do so.