M1 mac mini breaks 2 usb hard drives

[e65738]

May 26, 2021

I have an M1 mac mini and it has caused 2 usb hard drives (one seagate the other toshiba) to completely stop functioning within the space of one month. I have three imacs and I have tested the drives on other machines and the iMacs no longer even see either of the devices so disk utility can not be used to repair them. I think this happened after I did a hard reset on the mac mini (ie hold the power button down until the power goes off) however I wasn't watching for this so that might be a false memory. Has anyone else lost an usb HD on an m1 mac mini or know anything about this problem?

 

[AppleB]

I have 3 USB hard drives connected to my M1 Mini. A 2.5 Seagate mechanical drive a Seagate Barracuda SSD and a 2.5 Samsung SSD.
No problems so far haven’t had the need to do a hard reset. I’ve had the power go out in my neighborhood twice in one week while the computer was on and hard drives connected but it didn’t cause any issues.

 

[e65738]

I'm hoping my problems were just bad luck but it looks very suspicious

 

[thingstoponder]

Probably a coincidence. If the Mac was Intel then you probably wouldn’t think it was caused by the computer itself. Hard drives die, it just happens. I’ve had some bad luck.