Seagate Backup plus 5TB keeps ejecting randomly during M1 mini sleeping

[ranjan2001]

Lately my 4 month old Seagate - Backup Plus 5TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive keeps on disappearing from desktop & finder after I wake up the mini from sleep in the morning with the above error notification. The Hdd is connected on USB port on back of M1 mini.
This problem started after 11.5.1 or 11.6 update AFAIK. I am new to Mac Mini is there any hidden setting which I am missing or has changed or turned on/off which is causing this behavior?

Once it disappear, weather I disconnect & reconnect or restart the M1 mini it doesn't appear.

Could it be the seagate HDD problem or M1 mac hardware or just Bigsur update caused this problem?

 

[ranjan2001]

Please help!

Have tried every possible thing, even tried a different cable today to connect usb-c port (earlier it was USB 3 ports) but the disk doesn't get detected & one fine day it connects & shows up in finder without any problem. I also tried Safe Mode on M1 mini but same problem.
There must be a solution to this Mac problem

 

[bobcomer]

I think there's a problem with Monterey and M1 Macs. My USB devices (ethernet, mouse, hdmi) disconnect on sleep about half the time -- it's *very very* annoying, and plugging and unplugging things until it works is the only way to get it going. M1 MBA is what I have...

That said, your drive could be having a problem too. Do you have another PC to plug it in to to test? (just plug it in and see if it disappears on the other PC too...)

 

[Fishrrman]

My advice:

Don't put it "to sleep".

The difference in power consumption between "asleep" and "awake, but idling" on these is so small as to be almost "next-to-nothing".

Instead of sleeping the computer, just put the display to sleep. I believe you can arrange this in the energy saver preference pane.

Works fine for me on my 2018 Mini...

 

[Mr Screech]

Don't put it "to sleep".

This.

And you might want to look at the Amphetamine app.
Start a session with 'Drive Alive', to keep the drive from sleeping.

 

[ranjan2001]

That said, your drive could be having a problem too. Do you have another PC to plug it in to to test? (just plug it in and see if it disappears on the other PC too...)

In My case I am still on Bigsur 11.6, tomorrow I am going to my friends place to test this hard drive & will get to know if there is a problem with the new disk or not, meanwhile I have asked Seagate support also to help hoping them to revert back in 1-2 days.

 

[ranjan2001]

My advice:

Don't put it "to sleep".

The difference in power consumption between "asleep" and "awake, but idling" on these is so small as to be almost "next-to-nothing".

Instead of sleeping the computer, just put the display to sleep. I believe you can arrange this in the energy saver preference pane.

Works fine for me on my 2018 Mini...

Last time 2 days ago when it connected I had disabled the sleep from energy saver options, so whole day it remained connected. When I shut down the mini at night next day morning it refuses to show up in the finder & disk utility both, so I got a new Usb-C cable today but the problem remains same

 

[ranjan2001]

And you might want to look at the Amphetamine app.
Start a session with 'Drive Alive', to keep the drive from sleeping.

Thanks for the suggestion, I will try this once I get the hard drive detected next time.

 

[bobcomer]

In My case I am still on Bigsur 11.6, tomorrow I am going to my friends place to test this hard drive & will get to know if there is a problem with the new disk or not, meanwhile I have asked Seagate support also to help hoping them to revert back in 1-2 days.

Big Sur did it on my MBA too, but not nearly as much. Making sure it's not the drive will be a big step and maybe making your machine not sleep is the best thing to do as the others suggested.

 

[ranjan2001]

With 2 different usb 3 & usb C cables on different ports I tried connecting it to my friends MBP & windows computer but none detected the drive so it now needs to be sent for RMA to seagate. Never thought a backup drive will go bad just in 4 months.

 

[ranjan2001]

Found the main culprit to be ExFat partition in another facebook discussion.

"exfat doesn’t journal the file tree so if the header gets corrupted the entire drive is corrupted. Sometimes it can be fixed by plugging the drive into windows and then ejecting properly, or by doing drive repair but you’re likely going to lose files"

So All these months my only solution was to mount the drive to Windows 10 scan for errors & then again the disc would connect fine on Mac os till the next time time when the problem of ejecting randomly would happen even though now I have been using Amphetamine app.


Further research I found this discussion confirming the same ExFat issue

Can't mount exFAT external drive in macOS

I have a Western Digital MyBook (25EE) 8TB External Drive. It is formatted with exFAT. I can't recall exactly how it was formatted, but I believe it was done with Synology's DiskStation for my Syno...

apple.stackexchange.com

Before I format the drive in APFS or HFS has anyone used Seagate disk with APFS/HFS & found that the drive ejecting randomly was solved?

Al these months both Apple & seagate support have been making users do useless solutions to solve the problem without success.

Disk Utility Errors and Questions for macOS 10.11 and higher | Seagate India