MP 7,1 USB drives connected to Inateck PCIe USB 3.2 Card disconnecting? What am I doing wrong?

[John_B Beta]

Hallo! I've got 3 Samsung USB SSDs connected directly into one of these Inateck PCIe to USB 3.2 cards in my 2019 Mac Pro. 7,1 (running verdana - I do pro audio and don't want to UG to Sonoma yet - in fact I've just finished a complete clean reinstall after Sonoma was forced on me in Jan...)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B096ZK6C37/ref=pe_27063361_487055811_TE_dp_1

I've noticed when coming back to the computer after a period of inctivity overnight there are multiple notifications that the drives have been ejected non-safely. Which obviously isn't ideal... Sometimes the desktop is as I left it, sometimes the drives have shuffled over into the wrong positions in the process. Which is annoying. Not as annoying as having to replace them or losing data will be if this keeps on happening and damages them!

I have my energy settings set to keep everything alive as much as possible & not sleeping - keep hard drives on etc etc - I just have the screen turn off after 20 mins. D

If this PCI card incompatible or something? I previously had a sonnet PCI USB card in, which was the one everyone was recommending in 2020 when I first got this Mac Pro - which was even worse and half the time drives weren't even mounting as (after talking to support something to do with power delivery was tripping the card and I had to restart all the time to get drives to mount - but that's another story.)

Any of you been through this before and have words of wisdom? Is it an OS thing that will happen with any PCI card or is it a common issue with the Inatecks? If so, any solid alternatives I should replace it with?

Thanks in advance!!

JB

 

[tonmischa]

My guess: Your Mac is going to sleep when the display is off. This could lead to the eject messages.

Two options:
1. Shut down your Mac completely during the night. (Might also save you a few bucks.)
or
2. Check in System Preferences --> Displays --> Advanced :
Make sure the option is turned on: "Prevent automatic sleeping when display is off".

 

[John_B Beta]

My guess: Your Mac is going to sleep when the display is off. This could lead to the eject messages.

Two options:
1. Shut down your Mac completely during the night. (Might also save you a few bucks.)
or
2. Check in System Preferences --> Displays --> Advanced :
Make sure the option is turned on: "Prevent automatic sleeping when display is off".

Thanks sir!

I double checked point 2 and already had that setting turned on. Bummer as i thought we had a solution there!

I swear this never happened under Monterey - feels like something changed when I went up to Ventura :-/

Alas turning it off overnight isn't really an option as that's when it does all the cloud backups & my internet is too crap to do throughout the day :-(

[edit] in the meantime I dug out an old USB hub and have hooked all of these drives to that via one of the stock usb ports - will see if that stops it. Not really what I want to have to do long term though...