Monterey cannot erase external SSD

[linuxophile2]

I am on Monterey 12.01 with my new 14" Macbook Pro M1 Max.
I tried to use disk utility to erase 2 of my external SSD from exFAT into APFS.

I tried the GUI Disk Utility and Terminal command, basically tried everything that I could search on Google but was not successful.
Every time MacOS just unmount the disk and process stuck there for a few hours without any progress.

Does anyone run into the same issue and know any way to solve this?

Monterey has several issues with certain (most?) external drives.
I installed (reformat drive + clean install) and then it could not read an external SSD (iMac 2017).

The first time I was trying to install on the external SSD (faster than the Fusion drive) but it hanged on reboot.

There are several reports along these lines in the Apple forums. It seems that there is something in the kernel that makes Monterey incompatible with certain Drives. Mine was an Adata, but others experienced the same issue with all sort of drives (WD, Crucial, you name it).

(and no, the drive is in perfect conditions; it works fine on the same machine if I boot BigSur).

I removed Monterey and reverted to BigSur.

 

[StefanDesu]

Has anyone tried if this is fixed in macOS 12.1 (just released a few days ago)? I have this exact issue with a new 4TB Samsung 870 QVO in an external enclosure, but I can't update to 12.1 just now.

Edit: Seems like my particular issue was solved by using another enclosure (an old one I still had around) to erase the disk. Now it works perfectly fine in the new enclosure, including adding/removed APFS volumes and using it on multiple computers.

 

[DirkSchreib]

I have tried a few small tests:

Hardware: 4 TB 860 QVO in a IcyBox IB-247-C31 (USB C 3.1) with USB C 3.1 compatible cable
Software: macOS Monterey Version 12.1

On a MacBookAir M1:
Erasing partition, creating new APFS partition: ok
Copying some files: ok
Reading back files: ok
Eject: ok

On an iMac 27 (2017):
Mounting drive: ok
Reading files (from MacBookAir): ok
Copying some files: ok
Reading back files: ok
Erasing partition, creating new APFS partition: ok (took way longer than on MBA)
Copying some files: ok
Reading back files: ok
Eject: ok

On MacBookAir M1 again:
Mounting: Error can't activate drive: (com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter-Fehler 49218.)

On iMac 27 (2017) again:
Mounting: Error can't activate drive: (com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter-Fehler 49218.)

It looks like some software part thinks the drive is corrupted and flipped an "unusable bit" on the drive.
I assume the drive will work perfectly when used used with the MacBookAir. Will do some more tests with a 3rd Mac in the near future.

Dirk

 

[dragon jeans]

Been having the same issue (even after updating to 12.1) with my 1TB Scandisk Extreme Portable. Tried 3 different hubs both with USB-C to USB-C and USB-C to USB 3.0. Once in ever maybe 10 tries the drive mounts and is indexed, but the read/write speeds are verrrrrry sluggish. Cruelly, this drive is also where my time machine backups are, so I can't even revert to Big Sur... I'm on a 2019 Intel i7 MBP, for the record.

If anyone has any workarounds or anything, please let me know. I'm a musician and most of my music/project files are on this drive, so it's pretty crippling for me.

 

[newsman1979]

Been having the same issue (even after updating to 12.1) with my 1TB Scandisk Extreme Portable. Tried 3 different hubs both with USB-C to USB-C and USB-C to USB 3.0. Once in ever maybe 10 tries the drive mounts and is indexed, but the read/write speeds are verrrrrry sluggish. Cruelly, this drive is also where my time machine backups are, so I can't even revert to Big Sur... I'm on a 2019 Intel i7 MBP, for the record.

If anyone has any workarounds or anything, please let me know. I'm a musician and most of my music/project files are on this drive, so it's pretty crippling for me.

if you can find 2.0 USB-C to USB cable (slow speed) you can use that to erase your SSD with APFS file system
and then put back the cable that came with your enclosure (fast speed) and plug it back to your Mac that has macOS Monterey and your SSD should work with full read & write speed.

 

[dragon jeans]

if you can find 2.0 USB-C to USB cable (slow speed) you can use that to erase your SSD with APFS file system
and then put back the cable that came with your enclosure (fast speed) and plug it back to your Mac that has macOS Monterey and your SSD should work with full read & write speed.

Bleh - yea erasing/reformatting the drive is not an option, unfortunately. The only thing I can think of is to find a drive to borrow, mirror my drive to that, and then revert to big sur from that drive.

 

[newsman1979]

yes that is the right way to do that, i have 2 backup to my original ssd backup that is why i did erase my original ssd and put back my data from the other backup ssd to the original ssd. good luck

 

[jha]

Erasing an external SSD causes disk utility to crash for me on 12.1

 

[DirkSchreib]

if you can find 2.0 USB-C to USB cable (slow speed) you can use that to erase your SSD with APFS file system
and then put back the cable that came with your enclosure (fast speed) and plug it back to your Mac that has macOS Monterey and your SSD should work with full read & write speed.

This does *not* work reliably for me. Every time I access the drive on the USB 3.1 Bus with 10Gb/s instead of the USB 3.0 Bus with 480Mb/s the drive fails on the next reconnect.

My enclosure is based on a VIA Labs, Inc. chip (Product ID: 0x0715, Vendor ID: 0x2109).
I assume this is just not compatible with macOS Monterey.

 

[white7561]

This does *not* work reliably for me. Every time I access the drive on the USB 3.1 Bus with 10Gb/s instead of the USB 3.0 Bus with 480Mb/s the drive fails on the next reconnect.

My enclosure is based on a VIA Labs, Inc. chip (Product ID: 0x0715, Vendor ID: 0x2109).
I assume this is just not compatible with macOS Monterey.

That's a VIA VL716Q4 chip? I think I recognize that chip. My 2242 enclosure uses it and it's fine on my MacBook pro 16" M1 . 10gigs link speed using the type c port. From experience it seems like the chip compatibility depends on the host device too. I think it depends on host devices and the firmware they're on. Since i know for a fact that UASP is borked on my old MBA 2014 for my ASM2362 nvme enclosure. USB 2 without UASP works fine..

And the ASM2362 nvme enclosure works fine on my new 16" . So yeah combinations between the chipset on the MacBook and the current firmware

 

[DirkSchreib]

Yes - based on some USB vendor/product lists - it is the VL716.
This works on my MacBookAir M1 as well (with Big Sur and Monterey).
The problem is my iMac 2017 with Monterey.

 

[white7561]

Yes - based on some USB vendor/product lists - it is the VL716.
This works on my MacBookAir M1 as well (with Big Sur and Monterey).
The problem is my iMac 2017 with Monterey.

Yep it's prob the compatibility between the USB bridge chip with the macs USB chip (and the firmware prob)

 

[DirkSchreib]

I have tested another enclosure or dock in this case: ICY BOX IB-117-U31. This one is reported as vendor ID 0x0480 (Toshiba America Info. Systems) and product ID 0xa006.
I've read somewhere that this dock uses the ASMedia ASM1351 bridge chip, but can't verify this.
This dock works with the same SSD, which is not working in the ICY BOX-247-C31.

Conclusion: Some USB host chips have a compatibility problem with some USB bridge chips when working with macOS Monterey. (Probably related to USB 3.1 Gen2 (10 GBit/s) and capacity >2TB)

 

[Fishrrman]

Agree with Dirk above. Some kind of conflict between the Monterey OS and certain types of chips in the enclosures/controller boards.

How many here remember the problems once experienced connecting certain Firewire drives to the Mac, and the importance of using an enclosure with the "Oxford 911" chip...?

 

[Luthier13]

Agree with Dirk above. Some kind of conflict between the Monterey OS and certain types of chips in the enclosures/controller boards.

How many here remember the problems once experienced connecting certain Firewire drives to the Mac, and the importance of using an enclosure with the "Oxford 911" chip...?

Yup Firewire on various PPC Macs through several iterations of the OS, prior to that similar problems with 68k Macs, I thought Apple had got past this sort of garbage as I've not seen it for a bit.

12.1 does not fix it as of 25/12/21, I have several Segate 1Tb SSD drives that it can't format on a 2019 iMac with a 1Tb fusion drive, booted from an external Samsung 1Tb MU-PAT0B running Monterey 12.1. I also have a 1Tb Seagate SSD formatted via Big Sur that I use as Time Machine, once upgraded to Monterey it was unable to back up to it as it said that the backup was 1.2Tb (from a 1Tb drive ) ) and the TM disk was only 1 TB, interesting as there was only around 500 GB of data on the source drive.

I hope we're not about to see a return to the days of having to check drive compatibility before purchasing :-(

I normally leave updating to the latest OS for at least 6 months ) but decided to try Monterey and the upgrade was the most seamless for sometime, until it came to doing backups........

No problem for the iMac as the Big Sur installation was untouched as I was trying to get away from the slow Fusion drive by using an external SSD, but my 2017 MBA is now reliant on a TM drive created under Big Sur. Interestingly that TM on my MBA worked perfectly, same version of the 1Tb Seagate drive that didn't work on the more recent iMac.

Also CCC is apparently unable to create a bootable backup, more secure I'm sure but it leaves you somewhat exposed if you've not gone to the extent of creating a backup from scratch on an external SSD, by doing a clean install of the OS and then manually copying all your files to it............ Especially if like me you use your mac where there is no internet (Strange that, there are places where there is no internet and the assumption for pretty well all computing these days is that the internet is ubiquitous).

I also note that M1 macs will not boot from an external drive if the internal one has failed, effectively bricking your mac. This sort of stuff is why I moved from Windows back in '85 but it appears there's nowhere to hide as Apple seem to have abandoned their bulletproof approach for capabilities that many of us neither want nor need.

 

[Fishrrman]

Luthier:

Have you tried using AN OLDER CABLE (one that is not USB3) when attempting to format drives that otherwise seem "un-formattable"?

As strange as it seems, an older USB2 cable (perhaps even a USB1.1 cable) might work. These are distinguishable by the fact that USB3 cables have a "blue tip" at the connector, while older/slower cables do not. Others have stated that this has worked for them with otherwise-unformattable drives.

CCC CAN create a bootable backup.
I don't have an m-series Mac [yet] so I can't try it.
But... I believe you have to be using the latest version of CCC. Then, there is an option in there somewhere for a "legacy clone" or "legacy backup".
You also have to ERASE the target drive first, and "start from scratch".

Once the clone is created, there may be additional tricks to get it to boot.
But others have posted that they have created bootable clones using CCC on an m-series Mac.

You're right about the m-Macs NOT BEING BOOTABLE AT ALL (even externally) if the internal drive fails. I sense this is going to become a major problem for owners at some point in the future...

 

[IowaLynn]

There were several discussions on Monterey and SSD’s on the Apple Community forum on Apple, but starting today, they were all deleted by moderators, and those of us who were responding about things to do or even that there is a bug in Monterey as the issue have had our posts removed and we have received warnings for violating the rules, and that if we persist in talking about problems with Monterey we will lose our ability to post on the community.

They appear to want to shut down any discussion that there are any issues with Monterey at all.

IT GOT Apple’s ATTENTION. It’s still wrong. Should be front page news on MR and others.

And anyone around in OS X days had their share of issues related to HDD, early SSD support and SATA. Or saw FireWire drive wiped out by 10.3.0 where they shipped an older version than the FC, and fixed that bug.

I thought I was being careful waiting for 12.1 to upgrade but apparently not.

Not 200% confirmed but Intel Mac Mini 2020 wasn’t booting with disk drives attached. They did earlier allow updating with CCC 6 and running TimeMachine a couple times. WD Blue 1TB and Samsung T7.

I’ve got Big Sur clones on old 10k Raptors for insurance. And some WD 2TB platters and WD Black that never thought I’d call upon.

 

[erthquake]

Agree with Dirk above. Some kind of conflict between the Monterey OS and certain types of chips in the enclosures/controller boards.

How many here remember the problems once experienced connecting certain Firewire drives to the Mac, and the importance of using an enclosure with the "Oxford 911" chip...?

Yep. That chipset was crucial for getting external FW drives to work with Pro Tools hardware on PCs too.

 

[Sandman824]

Having same problems after running on external 4tb Samsung QVO crashed with monterey update. Was formatted for big sur. Tried to erase drive in ADATA external case failed. TriedApricorn usb drive connector(no case just cable) and it took 10 seconds to format drive. Now will put Monterey on drive and see what happens, put drive back in case if it all works, or just Velcro it to my imac

 

[Sailornaut]

Can not connect either SanDisk SSD 2TB or 4TB drive to the new MBP 14 with the M1 chip!! Both drives work just fine on a MBP 13 2019. Apparently there is no way to make a time machine backup work on the new MBP? Did try an old 2026 external USB HDD and it mounts and can read / write. Good grief how can this incompatibility happen?

 

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

Bought new WD external hdd to use with Time Machine backup. TM started to prepare the drive for use, but after a short while it stopped with a failure message. Tried to fix using Disk Utility, but won't erase/format. Tried to erase in Terminal, but also no success. Thought it might be a defective drive, so bought a Seagate drive. Same results. Can't format/erase with Disk Warrior, either. Windows machine and a different mac running Mojave also can't do anything with these two disks. Time Machine in Monterey has trashed two brand new external hard drives that worked properly when first connected. Spent over an hour on the phone with Apple support with screen sharing so they could see for themselves how Disk Utility failed to erase these disks and how they were unusable.

How widespread is this issue now? When will Apple acknowledge and fix?

 

[DirkSchreib]

Most likely the drives are still ok. Try to format on yet another computer or erasing the first bytes on the drive. (e.g. dd)
Can you have a look which bridge chips are used by your drives? Maybe we can compile a list of working/non-working chipsets?

 

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

Most likely the drives are still ok. Try to format on yet another computer or erasing the first bytes on the drive. (e.g. dd)
Can you have a look which bridge chips are used by your drives? Maybe we can compile a list of working/non-working chipsets?

Could you advise what command I can use to erase the first bytes on the drive? Also, how do I determine which bridge chips are used?

 

[DirkSchreib]

I used dd. (in Terminal, please be careful with the disk numbers. E.g. sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m )
Lookup the disk number with ‚diskutil list‘. If you have never used the Terminal before, I would start with something else.

 

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

I used dd. (in Terminal, please be careful with the disk numbers. E.g. sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m )
Lookup the disk number with ‚diskutil list‘. If you have never used the Terminal before, I would start with something else.

Thanks. I've used Terminal before, but don't know many commands. Disk is disk2.