External NVMe constantly disconnects

[AbominableFish]

I recently purchased a 4 TB MP34 drive from Amazon. Reason for this purchase is that is can sustain write speeds of over 1 GB/s given that it's a TLC drive.

I noticed that after writing anywhere from 50 GB—1 TB of data on it, it starts randomly disconnecting and reconnecting, and this keeps happening, up to 15 times per minute.

Sounds like a temperature issue? The enclosure definitely gets scorching hot to the touch. But heat does not seem to be the issue given that I already tried pointing a fan at it.

1. NVMe Enclosures Tested:
   • Attempt: Tested four to five different NVMe enclosures from various companies.
   • Result: All enclosures exhibited the disconnecting issue.
2. Cooling Methods Applied:
   • Attempt: Used a thermal pad, various enclosures, exposure to sub-zero temperatures, and directed fan cooling.
   • Observation: The enclosure remained cool (slightly warm at most) with fan cooling, but the disconnecting issue persisted.
3. Alternate Computer Testing:
   • Attempt: Tested with a different MacBook.
   • Result: Disconnecting issue continued to occur.
4. Cable Variations:
   • Attempt: Tried different cables to connect the enclosure and the laptop.
   • Result: Disconnecting issue continued to occur.

I plan on testing a different NVMe (another MP34 I'm getting from Amazon) soon. Otherwise I'll try a different NVMe altogether. But I really want this to work... any ideas why this issue might be occurring?

 

[AbominableFish]

My current hunch is that it's a bug with the MP34 itself when it's writing data from the SLC cache to the rest of the memory. This is probably why it keeps disconnecting and reconnecting again once a certain amount of data is written to it, even after I plug it into another MacBook. What else could it be apart from the SLC cache flushing...?

When I first started writing data to this drive, I had written almost 1 TB of data onto the drive before it started disconnecting constantly.

I'm also not 100% sure, but I think I can write a lot more data onto the drive before it starts disconnecting if I haven't written to the drive in a while.

I think I'll try formatting the drive and seeing if there's a delay after this disconnecting issue starts.

 

[bogdanw]

Does it only happen when running on battery or it’s the same when the MacBook is plugged in?
Have you checked for firmware updates for the drive?

 

[AbominableFish]

Does it only happen when running on battery or it’s the same when the MacBook is plugged in?
Have you checked for firmware updates for the drive?

Seems like it happens both when plugged in or on battery. Most of my testing was on battery.

I’ll try checking for firmware updates on the drive. I’ll be honest though, never have updated an NVMe firmware. But it might work.

I also retested it after formatting. Send like even with ample cooling only about 150 GB can be written to the disk until the incessant disconnecting starts. The 1 TB written initially must have been a fluke.