iMac - external drives.

[andrewc]

I have a 2022 iMac,  connected to this via a hub I have 2 x 1T Samsung externally powered hard drives.  On one of these I keep photos & videos,  the other is a Time Machine backup for the iMac & the other drive. 


These drives are permanently connected.  I rarely power down the iMac, usually putting it into sleep mode instead.  Frequently I find that one or both of the 2 drives is not visible as connected in Finder.


Is there a way I can stop this happening ?


If there isn't a way , is there a way I can make the iMac rediscover the external drives without having to physically disconnect/reconnect the hub ?

[ian]

I have two drives plugged into a hub and this doesn’t happen so it might be the hub. There might be a better way but you can remount any attached drives in Disk Utility.

[Jaded]

What version of MacOS are you on, and what connection type are you using, oh, and are the drives HD or SSD?

[andrewc]

OS is 12.4 Monterey.   The 2 drives are Samsung 2T HD connected via one of these.  https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08P3GDLVP/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00


I do seem to get the warning message about not ejecting a drive on shut down a lot,  even when I've not shut down the machine or disconnected the drive.

[Jaded]

Hmmm, it is probably not connected at all, but I have found quite a bit of disk weirdness with the current and previous MacOSes, never had it before. Mainly SSDs, but HDs aren't immune.

[Horizon]

I'm running Monterey on a 2015 ssd iMac and have two external hd drives directly connected, which are both partitioned, and run a series of timed backups inc TimeMachine. Never had any problems with drives unmounting or not showing - only turn the iMac off when I'm on holiday ie 2/3 times a year. I'd suspect the hub to start with - could you connect one of the drives directly and see what happens?

[ian]

Sometimes powered hubs go into standby mode, so the drives are unpowered when you wake your Mac, so they don't mount (you could cycle the power on the hub to verify). My hub seems to keep powered up (as it's also a charger) and the drives themselves go to sleep.