M2 Mac mini Pro receiving incorrect "Disk not ejected properly"

[Zephar77]

Tony, just figured out how to run black magic on any hard drive including those with macOS or Time Machine. I've been picking the hard drive because that's what it asks for. It says select target "Drive" in Black Magic to start the test. But that will read and write at the root level which you can't do on macOS drives or time machines. So you go to users home folder and select shared folder, which one is allowed to read and write on any time. And you're correct, create a folder on the Time Machine drive, temporarily, or just name it Black Magic folder , and you can run the test. I also bought several of those 8TB Seagate drives for Time Machine backups on my three iMacs, except I have the 4TB LaCie for my new Mac mini Pro. I got speeds up to 6,656 Mb/s on the 1TB Mac mini Pro! Each test comes out different and it's usually in the upper 5000 to lower 6000 but I got a screenshot of 6500. Seth

 

[TonyAguila]

Tony, just figured out how to run black magic on any hard drive including those with macOS or Time Machine. I've been picking the hard drive because that's what it asks for. It says select target "Drive" in Black Magic to start the test. But that will read and write at the root level which you can't do on macOS drives or time machines. So you go to users home folder and select shared folder, which one is allowed to read and write on any time. And you're correct, create a folder on the Time Machine drive, temporarily, or just name it Black Magic folder , and you can run the test. I also bought several of those 8TB Seagate drives for Time Machine backups on my three iMacs, except I have the 4TB LaCie for my new Mac mini Pro. I got speeds up to 6,656 Mb/s on the 1TB Mac mini Pro! Each test comes out different and it's usually in the upper 5000 to lower 6000 but I got a screenshot of 6500. Seth

Yes, after thinking about it, I realized that I could simply select a folder aside from the root of the system disk and speed test will work. I even tried it on the Applications folder itself. You should also try AmorphousDiskMark. I think it provides more information than Blackmagic.

I suggest formatting your TM drives as APFS (default, not case sensitive nor encrypted). Then when you add that drive to Time Machine, that’s the time to choose encryption. Just don’t forget the password.

 

[Zephar77]

Wow! Getting over 7,000Mb/s write speeds, using Amorphous, from the 1TB SSD on the M2 Mac mini Pro. Over double what was getting from the 512GB SSD that came with the first M2 Mac mini Pro that I returned, after discovering the full complement of NAND chips began with the 1TB and up... Coolz! Seth
Something changed with TM drives. I could add folders to the window in finder to TM drives; but, not now. Ahh.... Turn OFF TM first? Nope... Ah well. It would be in the low hundreds from an 8TB Seagate spinner.

 

[TonyAguila]

Wow! Getting over 7,000Mb/s write speeds, using Amorphous, from the 1TB SSD on the M2 Mac mini Pro. Over double what was getting from the 512GB SSD that came with the first M2 Mac mini Pro that I returned, after discovering the full complement of NAND chips began with the 1TB and up... Coolz! Seth
Something changed with TM drives. I could add folders to the window in finder to TM drives; but, not now. Ahh.... Turn OFF TM first? Nope... Ah well. It would be in the low hundreds from an 8TB Seagate spinner.

There are special properties to Time Machine drives. Even their Finder icons are different from other drives. And their file structure is different as well, with numerous invisible files for snapshots, links, cache, etc. That’s why I leave them alone. I’ve heard of people retrieving files directly from the (Finder) contents of the backup files. Yikes! If only things were that simple.

To access anything from TM drives, I always use the Time Machine app even if it can run painfully slowly. I recommend spending time playing with the Time Machine app to get a better feel for the restoration process.

 

[Jaygon]

Many thanks to you 2 guys for ALL the info & advice. This discussion has been very interesting and for me very timely. Best wishes to you both.

 

[Zephar77]

Many thanks to you 2 guys for ALL the info & advice. This discussion has been very interesting and for me very timely. Best wishes to you both.

Glad to hear the discussion was helpful for someone. Seth

 

[Zephar77]

There are special properties to Time Machine drives. Even their Finder icons are different from other drives. And their file structure is different as well, with numerous invisible files for snapshots, links, cache, etc. That’s why I leave them alone. I’ve heard of people retrieving files directly from the (Finder) contents of the backup files. Yikes! If only things were that simple.

To access anything from TM drives, I always use the Time Machine app even if it can run painfully slowly. I recommend spending time playing with the Time Machine app to get a better feel for the restoration process.

Tony, Here is my new cart of goodies. The more I read about the suggested items, CalDigit products products stand out singularly. And you're right about that enclosures as well. How does this set up look? Seth
The attachment won't stick it appears. But here's the enclosure ->
ORICO M.2 NVME SATA SSD Enclosure Adapter, USB C 3.2 Gen2, 6Gbps M2 SATA,
10Gbps NVME M-Key(B+M Key), Thunderbolt 3 Compatible, Aluminum Support UASP - $29
Samsung 980 - $169
CalDigit Thunderbolt-4 0.8m - $29

 

[TonyAguila]

Tony, Here is my new cart of goodies. The more I read about the suggested items, CalDigit products products stand out singularly. And you're right about that enclosures as well. How does this set up look? Seth
The attachment won't stick it appears. But here's the enclosure ->
ORICO M.2 NVME SATA SSD Enclosure Adapter, USB C 3.2 Gen2, 6Gbps M2 SATA,
10Gbps NVME M-Key(B+M Key), Thunderbolt 3 Compatible, Aluminum Support UASP - $29
Samsung 980 - $169
CalDigit Thunderbolt-4 0.8m - $29

Okay, before you press the order button… Because of my rabid interest in getting the fastest external SSD for my Mac, I was led into the rabbit hole of YouTube videos on all the reviews and reactions on the subject. But then I realized that I had enough storage right now in my Mac Studio, and plenty of external storage, albeit slow in comparison, of SSDs and hard disks that I’m not really in need of more storage. My interest, however, did not wane, but not for myself. With all the tech speak out there: PCIe, M.2, NVMe, USB 3, USB 4, USB-C, etc., etc., it started to be mind-boggling. So I decided to learn more…

A big surprise is the announcement of Thunderbolt 5! And I was expecting those external SSDs to start becoming Thunderbolt 4-compliant, it’s now passé. Some of the things I learned were the evolution of USB from USB 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.1 gen 1, 3.2 gen 2, 3.2 gen 2x2, until we get to USB 4, which, by the way, is the same as Thunderbolt 3. Then came Thunderbolt 4, which is the same max throughput as TB-3/USB4 at 40 Gbps but with a low end of 16 Gbps; Thunderbolt 4’s low limit is 32 Gbps. (In our 8-bit byte world, 40 Gbps (Gigabits/sec) is equivalent to 5 GBps (Gigabytes/sec).) I don’t really care. All I want is to know when TB4 will be implemented in those external enclosures and SSD because TB4 has been out long enough.

Then out comes out USB 4 V2 (this will probably be the Thunderbolt 5 standard) with max speed of 80 Gbps! It’s crazy. I think I will wait for the next generation Mac Studio with TB5 (there go my TB4 cables). Who knows what external SSDs will be like then.

I think your choice of the Samsung 980 PRO and Orico enclosure, though not the fastest, is your optimal replacement for the SanDisk. And you get to play with putting it together. Oh, don’t forget to buy additional thermal strips. You may have to replace the ones that came with the enclosure if they turn out too thin, or too thick. Extras come in various thicknesses. And they’re not expensive. A digital laser infrared thermometer will be handy to measure the temperature of the case. Oh, but there’s more! If you have a grounding wrist thingy to prevent static discharge… none of those jokers on video use them, and that’s the first rule of handling sensitive electronic devices. At the very least, do it next to your kitchen sink if it’s metal, or exposed water pipe or faucet, and discharge yourself by touching it a few moments before handling the SSD. Lastly, USB 3.2 Gen 2 maxes out at 20 Gbps, just so you know what to expect.

 

[Zephar77]

Tony, yes, I was coming to the same conclusion of thunderbolt 3/USB4, and why is the hardware for SSD's behind the computer hardware by many years? The thunderbolt five has been announced? Maybe we'll see some real thunderbolt 4 equipment to go along with it? Gads! Now I need some thermal paste and a sensor? No one has been able to keep up with the heat dissipated by these lagging new faster equipment? That you had to put together from bits of knowledge here and there like we're doing now? If you can have the time please send a link or name of the paste and sensor so I can add it onto my order and be prepared for the fun.
Thunderbolt five? “Good Grief Charlie Brown” ... there really is no thunderbolt four yet to attached to it! Seth

 

[TonyAguila]

Tony, yes, I was coming to the same conclusion of thunderbolt 3/USB4, and why is the hardware for SSD's behind the computer hardware by many years? The thunderbolt five has been announced? Maybe we'll see some real thunderbolt 4 equipment to go along with it? Gads! Now I need some thermal paste and a sensor? No one has been able to keep up with the heat dissipated by these lagging new faster equipment? That you had to put together from bits of knowledge here and there like we're doing now? If you can have the time please send a link or name of the paste and sensor so I can add it onto my order and be prepared for the fun.
Thunderbolt five? “Good Grief Charlie Brown” ... there really is no thunderbolt four yet to attached to it! Seth

They are just thermal strips (tape), double-sided. At least one should come with the enclosure, to attach to the SSD and the inside of the enclosure lid. Standard thicknesses go from .5 mm to 1.5 mm. I would get this one:

https://www.amazon.com/UCEC-Silicone-Thermal-Conductive-Thickness/dp/B09JKGMNTK/ref=sr_1_13?crid=3DFZEOFUHHBIG&keywords=ssd+thermal+strip&qid=1679060310&sprefix=ssd%2520thermal%2520strip%2Caps%2C203&sr=8-13

 

[Zephar77]

They are just thermal strips (tape), double-sided. At least one should come with the enclosure, to attach to the SSD and the inside of the enclosure lid. Standard thicknesses go from .5 mm to 1.5 mm. I would get this one:

https://www.amazon.com/UCEC-Silicone-Thermal-Conductive-Thickness/dp/B09JKGMNTK/ref=sr_1_13?crid=3DFZEOFUHHBIG&keywords=ssd+thermal+strip&qid=1679060310&sprefix=ssd%2520thermal%2520strip%2Caps%2C203&sr=8-13

Thanks Tony, Seth

 

[Zephar77]

Thanks Tony, Seth

Tony,
Should've done more research. Seems the Orico enclosure I purchased gave me slower speeds than the SanDisk, 980Mb/s. Daggumit! Ja ja ja.
Perhaps you might direct me to an enclosure that will get me up to speed. Looks like you get what you pay for is this one was around $22. Cannot get the picture of the enclosure to upload. It's in JPEG so not sure what the secret is. Screenshot of black magic loaded fine. This is what it says on the box:
ORICO®. M.2 SSD ENCLOSURE -> < https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B14DH54G?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details >

Seth

 

[Zephar77]

Okay, before you press the order button… Because of my rabid interest in getting the fastest external SSD for my Mac, I was led into the rabbit hole of YouTube videos on all the reviews and reactions on the subject. But then I realized that I had enough storage right now in my Mac Studio, and plenty of external storage, albeit slow in comparison, of SSDs and hard disks that I’m not really in need of more storage. My interest, however, did not wane, but not for myself. With all the tech speak out there: PCIe, M.2, NVMe, USB 3, USB 4, USB-C, etc., etc., it started to be mind-boggling. So I decided to learn more…

A big surprise is the announcement of Thunderbolt 5! And I was expecting those external SSDs to start becoming Thunderbolt 4-compliant, it’s now passé. Some of the things I learned were the evolution of USB from USB 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.1 gen 1, 3.2 gen 2, 3.2 gen 2x2, until we get to USB 4, which, by the way, is the same as Thunderbolt 3. Then came Thunderbolt 4, which is the same max throughput as TB-3/USB4 at 40 Gbps but with a low end of 16 Gbps; Thunderbolt 4’s low limit is 32 Gbps. (In our 8-bit byte world, 40 Gbps (Gigabits/sec) is equivalent to 5 GBps (Gigabytes/sec).) I don’t really care. All I want is to know when TB4 will be implemented in those external enclosures and SSD because TB4 has been out long enough.

Then out comes out USB 4 V2 (this will probably be the Thunderbolt 5 standard) with max speed of 80 Gbps! It’s crazy. I think I will wait for the next generation Mac Studio with TB5 (there go my TB4 cables). Who knows what external SSDs will be like then.

I think your choice of the Samsung 980 PRO and Orico enclosure, though not the fastest, is your optimal replacement for the SanDisk. And you get to play with putting it together. Oh, don’t forget to buy additional thermal strips. You may have to replace the ones that came with the enclosure if they turn out too thin, or too thick. Extras come in various thicknesses. And they’re not expensive. A digital laser infrared thermometer will be handy to measure the temperature of the case. Oh, but there’s more! If you have a grounding wrist thingy to prevent static discharge… none of those jokers on video use them, and that’s the first rule of handling sensitive electronic devices. At the very least, do it next to your kitchen sink if it’s metal, or exposed water pipe or faucet, and discharge yourself by touching it a few moments before handling the SSD. Lastly, USB 3.2 Gen 2 maxes out at 20 Gbps, just so you know what to expect.

Tony,
In looking over the different Acasis enclosures most of them say they max out at around 2500Gb/s. Which ones do you know will get the full 6Gb/s? Most of them don't list their speeds, and the ones that do I only find 2500, even at $159 for the enclosure.
If you have a way to a few that would be greatly appreciated. Seth

 

[TonyAguila]

Tony,
In looking over the different Acasis enclosures most of them say they max out at around 2500Gb/s. Which ones do you know will get the full 6Gb/s? Most of them don't list their speeds, and the ones that do I only find 2500, even at $159 for the enclosure.
If you have a way to a few that would be greatly appreciated. Seth

As I hinted at before, I’m setting aside any immediate plan to get an external NVMe SSD because I haven’t found any demonstration of even the fastest drives going anywhere near their rated speeds. I think the bottleneck is Thunderbolt. Until the enclosures can fully support Thunderbolt 4, they will remain below 2500. That’s really slow, compared to the speed of the internal SSDs is the newer Macs, that can hit 6,000 megabytes/second. 2,500 megabits/second equals a little over 300 megabytes/second.

In short, none of the external SSD enclosures can even come close.

 

[Zephar77]

As I hinted at before, I’m setting aside any immediate plan to get an external NVMe SSD because I haven’t found any demonstration of even the fastest drives going anywhere near their rated speeds. I think the bottleneck is Thunderbolt. Until the enclosures can fully support Thunderbolt 4, they will remain below 2500. That’s really slow, compared to the speed of the internal SSDs is the newer Macs, that can hit 6,000 megabytes/second. 2,500 megabits/second equals a little over 300 megabytes/second.

In short, none of the external SSD enclosures can even come close.

For $157 that SanDisk 2 TB was giving me 1050 to 1075 Mb/s, and might've been my best deal, at the moment....
Live and learn... this set up here that gives me 980 with tax what is nearly $250. ;-). No worries. I clicked the prime button and since I'm a prime member no problem returning.
Something must be up! The price on that SanDisk 2 TB, of which there are three versions running at speeds at 500, 1050, and 2000, the 1050 is down to $142! I believe you are correct that something is about to come out to make these drives obsolete and worth much less than what is their price, currently. Still, I was getting speeds of nearly 1200 on the initial burst in Black Magic, and that's not too bad. To get an enclosure with that Samsung 980 with 2500 would cost over $350 without tax... if I got speeds of 6000 to 7000 I would pay it. But in transferring files around 1050 is actually quite fast. I transferred my entire music library of nearly 50 GB from my 2014 iMac to my Mac mini Pro in just over one minute. I was very much surprised, and expecting to sit around for an hour, as I did transferring from the 2011 to the 2014 years ago... OK, fingers crossed, that something monumental is going to happen in the next few days, hopefully not weeks? Seth
P.S. The 2000 Mb/S - 2TB is now $219.

 

[TonyAguila]

UPDATE! The 2-terabyte Samsung 990 Pro M.2 first came out for $250, I decided to wait for a while. Well the price recently went down to $180, just $30 more than the 980 Pro, so I decided it was time.

I purchased it along with the ACASIS 40Gbps NVMe Enclosure for $140. I took great care with the assembly. Try to make a point of using a grounded wrist strap when working with electronic parts, contrary to what all those guys on YouTube pawing these components with no concern for electrostatic discharge. If you don’t have the grounding cable, at least do this next to your kitchen sink, if metal, where you can ground yourself before touching the goods, or on the metal faucet/pipe.

I took my time, but overall the assembly took less than 10 minutes. It was that easy. The ACASIS is tool-less, which was convenient. Formatting took but a couple of minutes with Disk Utility. I got this mainly for my Monterey and beta Ventura systems, which I had on a SATA SSD in my external Thunderbolt enclosure (painfully slow).

Here are the AmorphousDiskMark test results:

Left and right, respectively, results for the Samsung 990 and the internal Mac Studio SSD.

Pretty much what I hoped, but I thought the 990 Pro did better than I expected, and surprisingly, both of the random reads (queue depth of 64 and 1, respectively) were almost double that of the internal Apple SSD. That was unexpected!

It was also a pleasant surprise in that, right off the bat, the Samsung supports SMART and TRIM with no need to install drivers or to do the TRIMFORCE terminal command. My initial concern was temperature, and the case did feel warm to the touch, but DriveDX reports lifetime temperature range between 46–50°C so far, with temperature limits of 5–85°C, well within the limits so far. I thought I would have to eject and disconnect it when not in use, but turns out I don’t have to, and my Mac Studio runs 24/7.

There’s enough room left over from the two macOS partitions, so it will get a lot of use. So far, I’m very happy with this investment!

 

[Hyooman]

Receive, after coming out of sleep and occasionally from screen saver, on a new M2 Mac mini Pro Ventura 13.2.1 on thunderbolt 4 port connected to various 1 TB and 2 TB SanDisk SSD's, after after tapping the spacebar, in sleep mode, consistently get incorrect notice "Disk not ejected properly", but the disc has not been disconnected and is securely connected by the USB-C 6 inch connection cables that come with these external SSD's. Concerned this might be a hardware problem, as it only occurs on the fourth thunderbolt 4 USB-C connection closest to the HDMI connector. I'm hoping this is some software problem, but this has occurred since I've had the unit; however, I have not concerned myself with it because they are used with carbon Copy Cloner and immediately disconnected after completion of task. Recently, I have left them connected and after switching three of these external SSD's always get this notice coming out of sleep and occasionally from screensaver.
Has anyone else experience this issue?
Currently talking with Apple Supervisor and we are both perplexed by this and unable to recapitulate the issue while screen sharing. It seems the computer needs to go through what the settings are in lock screen – screensaver 20 minutes, display sleep three hours. We tried changing this to screen saver one minute and display sleep two minutes; but, this did not produce the notice. It seems the computer itself must go to sleep, but selecting sleep from the Apple menu does not yield the notice. Something else is going on. Have erased one of the drives, one 2 TB SanDisk SSD with speed of 1050 Mb per second.
There is a LaCie spinning 4 TB connected to the second thunderbolt 4 port, and the Apple display on the first thunderbolt port, and have never received such notice. Only the fourth thunderbolt port produces this notice, which is now becoming of concern.
Anyone else having this issue or some helpful advice would be appreciated.
Best,
Seth

I get the same error on a 1TB SanDisk SSD disk that I use for doc storage. It happens spontaneously while I'm using the M2 Mac mini as well as when the computer is sitting idly. I've tried it on both of my thunderbolt ports, with different cables. It seems to be something whacky with macOS.