External Hard Disk Corrupted After updating to Big Sur 11.3 on M1

[Mr. Dee]

I have already scheduled a Genius Bar appointment for this coming Thursday. I wanted to post this to see if there is any hope, but I think its looking grim for my 4 TB G-Drive.

This week I updated my M1 13 inch MacBook Pro to Big Sur 11.3. Personally, I am not one to get the latest updates and like to take a wait and see approach. In fact, I am still on 13.7 on all my iOS devices. But, reading articles on reputable websites such as The Verge insisting that you update to 11.3 immediately because of vulnerabilities in earlier versions of Big Sur that were being actively exploited forced my hand. Now, I'm kinda regretting that decision.

The 4 TB G-Drive was originally bought at an Apple store back in 2018, never dropped it, most of the time stored in my desk drawer unless I need to retrieve something or backup my Macs and Windows device. The drive is split in three: NTFS, exFAT and Time Machine partitions for both my MacBook Pros. The drive has been working just fine up to the day I connected it to most recent release of Big Sur prior to 11.3. After updating to 11.3, I decided to backup the installation as I normally do.

Initially, the drive was acting weird, none of the partitions were mounting and Time Machine was not detecting anything; and there was just a buzzing sound. I disconnected the USB C cable, switched it around, nudged the cable a little bit, then all drives finally showed up in the Finder. I proceeded to perform a Time Machine backup, which I really wasn't monitoring, but it did back up I manually initiated it again to make sure and it said was up to date.

This evening, I needed an ISO off the drive, connected it to my older 2015 MBP, but I just heard an immediate buzzing sound. I thought maybe this was just the cable or the port I connected it to. I tried the other USB A port on the right and the same issue. There was an error message when I did connect it to the USB A port on the right saying I didn't disconnect the drive properly. After restarting the 2015 Mac, which was slow with a stuck pinwheel, I tried again and the issue persisted. This was not a good sign, so, I used the USB C cable and connected it to the M1 MacBook Pro and same thing kept happening, buzzing sound, no mounting.

I proceeded to boot up my Surface Pro 3 and connected it, same buzzing sound, Disk Management suggested 'initializing the drive', #notgood. I launched Disk Part in command prompt > list disks and only the local drive showed up.

Yes, I do have some important files on it, but, this sucks though. The fact is, the drive was working fine for 2 years and I have external drives including a G Drive from 2016 and going back to 2005 that never fail and it seems like this only started after that connection to my M1 Mac with Big Sur 11.3. I was mostly using the drive with Mojave without issue too.

So, has anyone encountered this issue too? I have done some web searches about issues with external drives existing under 11.2, but no concrete solutions or work arounds. This is more severe since it looks like even the NTFS and exFAT in addition Time Machine partitions have all failed. Whats strange is, I can't even initialize the drive in Windows either. I just don't want to pin this down to coincidence that the entire drive failed.

 

[Slartibart]

Open the case and remove the hard drive. Put it in a different casing or get a cheap SATA-2-USB adapter and connect the drive. the buzzing noise could originate from the power converter board inside the g-drive case, it is for sure better to not use/connect it further at the moment.
I am doing an educated guess here - the problem has nothing to do with the MacOS version or your computers. In my experience when converter boards fail the hard drive itself often is still okay.

nota bene: if the connection of any peripheral can be “improved” by “massaging” the connecting cable it is time to get rid of the cable.

 

[Mr. Dee]

Open the case and remove the hard drive. Put it in a different casing or get a cheap SATA-2-USB adapter and connect the drive. the buzzing noise could originate from the power converter board inside the g-drive case, it is for sure better to not use/connect it further at the moment.
I am doing an educated guess here - the problem has nothing to do with the MacOS version or your computers. In my experience when converter boards fail the hard drive itself often is still okay.

nota bene: if the connection of any peripheral can be “improved” by “massaging” the connecting cable it is time to get rid of the cable.

Well, I’ve isolated it’s not the cable, since I have two separate cables: USB C to USB C and USB C to USB A. The issue happens multiple machines but the drive worked fine until after I upgraded to Big Sur 11.3. I am suspecting similar to that hub issue from a few months ago being killed by Big Sur on M1 Macs, this might be in the same. I am not connecting it anymore until I go to the Apple store.

 

[Slartibart]

Well, I’ve isolated it’s not the cable, since I have two separate cables: USB C to USB C and USB C to USB A. The issue happens multiple machines but the drive worked fine until after I upgraded to Big Sur 11.3. I am suspecting similar to that hub issue from a few months ago being killed by Big Sur on M1 Macs, this might be in the same. I am not connecting it anymore until I go to the Apple store.

I doubt that this originates from software. The Knowledgebase article Apple Computers and Displays: Powering peripherals through USB contains some general guidelines and illustrates using System Profiler to provide information about the output (according to specifications) of a Macs USB ports.

If you want to test the real world voltage output of a given USB port on an individual Macintosh at a given load you will have to use a test device. The article is older but the principle and the test circuit are what one needs. Apple provides the specs for USB-C here.

 

[applechips]

Was puzzled when my 4TB G-Drive (USB-C, on the thunderbolt port) caused my M1 iMac 2021 to reboot immediately after an upgrade to Monterey 12.0.1. I agreed when asked if I would like to send a generated report to Apple.

That same drive was recognised on my Late 2013 iMac 21.5 (Sierra 10.12.6) and fortunately, I was able to copy almost all the files out! A small number of files were bad and had to be sacrificed. I had done a re-format (as well as remove a partition that came with the drive that I did not bother to remove) and it seemed good on the 21.5.

Earlier today, I tried using it on the M1 iMac and it wasn't being recognised!!! I have a few similar 4TB G-Drives (all white, USB-C, on that same thunderbolt port, using the same cables) and thus far, none had given me problems.

I have had that drive being erased at level 1 on the 21.5 some 12 hours ago and it is still being formatted (about 75% done I would guess) as I type this reply....

I'm puzzled!

 

[BlueMacawBird]

Well, since the drive exhibits the behavior across multiple machines the drive or its enclosure is the issue. If you can, remove the drive from the enclosure and either move it to another enclosure or use a SATA cable connector as suggested by Slartibart to attach the bare drive to a machine, and see it it still makes the noise. It could go either way, enclosure or disk.

Drives die all the time, and the fact it ran fine for two years or so does not mean all that much. I have lots of ten, fifteen year old drives that work OK. I had a Seagate 2TB drive I bought new die in a couple of years. Mechanical devices are destined to fail sooner or later.

On a separate note, using one drive for multiple backups or other purposes is not advised. If the drive fails it takes everything with it, so we try to dedicate a physical device to each purpose unless we have no choice. Large hard disks are cheap these days and having one for each purpose is the safe way to go.

 

[BlueMacawBird]

Was puzzled when my 4TB G-Drive (USB-C, on the thunderbolt port) caused my M1 iMac 2021 to reboot immediately after an upgrade to Monterey 12.0.1. I agreed when asked if I would like to send a generated report to Apple.

That same drive was recognised on my Late 2013 iMac 21.5 (Sierra 10.12.6) and fortunately, I was able to copy almost all the files out! A small number of files were bad and had to be sacrificed. I had done a re-format (as well as remove a partition that came with the drive that I did not bother to remove) and it seemed good on the 21.5.

Earlier today, I tried using it on the M1 iMac and it wasn't being recognised!!! I have a few similar 4TB G-Drives (all white, USB-C, on that same thunderbolt port, using the same cables) and thus far, none had given me problems.

I have had that drive being erased at level 1 on the 21.5 some 12 hours ago and it is still being formatted (about 75% done I would guess) as I type this reply....

I'm puzzled!

I have found that newer versions of MacOS can be picky about recognizing disks. I've had cases where a machine would mount the disk and show it in disk utility, but not allow the disk to be erased or formatted, or try to do so but return an error. Another machine with an earlier version of the OS had no trouble doing what I wanted done. I don't know why, but as you found it comes in handy to keep some older machines available to get a stubborn drive to work. But remember that an older machine may be running a version of MacOS that does not know about APFS disks and if that is all you have available you would be out of luck. I have over twenty older machines to resort to and they do come in handy at times.

 

[applechips]

Many thanks for your reply BlueMacawBird.

Today, I put the G-Technology 4TB USB-C hard drive on my MacBook Pro Late 2018 4-Thunderbolt Touch Bar model (Intel) loaded with macOS Monterey and it too cannot mount this drive. In Disk Utility, the drive is greyed-out.

I borrowed my wife's M1 MacBook Air with macOS Big Sur and was surprised that it mounted properly!

My suspicions are now on macOS Monterey!!! Hope Apple is looking into this!

 

[BlueMacawBird]

When you attached the drive to the MacBook Air, did it still make the buzzing sound?

I'm still suspicious of the drive, and if it was mine I would copy the data to new drives as soon as possible. It may be working at the moment, but could fail completely at any time.

While MacOS can certainly have some issues recognizing drives, the OS is not going to cause the drive to make abnormal noises. Abnormal noises are going to be either the drive itself or possibly the enclosure.