Preventing External Drive Disconnections & Lightroom Catalog Corruption on Macs

I was interested about the mentioned disconnections, as Ive had a spate of them recently (almost every night) finding disk ejection error warnings when getting on the computer in the morning. Im connecting 2 HDDs via the single right side USB C on a M1 MBP. The connection from there is through an Apple USB C to TB adapter, attached to a Thunderbold cable (TB 3 maybe??? Square fitting) which connects to my twin HDD bay (RocketStor twin SATA bay dock). Been doing it like this for years with no problems but recently I started editing video I keep on a Samsung T7 SSD, which Ive had connected to one of the USB C ports on the opposite side (left side of the M1). Thats when the problems seem to have started. But since its connected to the left side on its own, it doesnt match up with the mentioned problem 'connecting devices on same side of the MBP' issue.

Needing more connections of late, last week I invested in an IVANKY FusionDock Max1 and started connecting the Samsung T7 through that instead and the disconnections seem to have stopped. The HDD Bay connection on the right side hasn't changed and still connected directly to the M1, but I plan to move that to the FusionDock as well. As for the other stuff; Ive noticed no corruption, or ghost files, etc. but havnt gone searching for any. Interesting you mentioned the Samsung T7 though.

Edited: So I woke up this morning and my drives had disconnected again. The T7 Samsung wasnt even connected to the dock. Back to the drawing board.

I seemed to have this type of problem occasionally a couple of years ago. It’s been much more reliable lately, I rarely get unexpected disconnections now so I wondered if there were some more recent fixes for it in macOS. It’s at the point where I no longer pay much attention to which drive is plugged into which port.

When my MacBook Pro is on my desk, I now have several different USB and Thunderbolt SSDs connected for photo/video mass storage, cache/scratch files, and Time Machine backup at the same time, all day long. None of the SSDs is plugged directly into the Mac; they are all behind at least one level of Thunderbolt/USB hub that also has displays and other devices connected. (So basically all the drives are hanging off of a single USB-C port and controller on my Mac.) This is so when I need to take my MacBook Pro off the desk and work somewhere else, there is only one Thunderbolt cable I need to disconnect. It’s all been running smoothly for months.

That’s clue #1 that made me question how old the source material was that ChatGPT was using. Clue #2 was this part:

Run this in Terminal:

bash

CopyEdit

diskutil list

I decided to run it. macOS Terminal first displayed the message:

The default interactive shell is now zsh.
To update your account to use zsh, please run `chsh -s /bin/zsh`.
For more details, please visit https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208050.
bash-3.2$ CopyEdit
bash: CopyEdit: command not found
bash-3.2$ diskutil list

So, the code from ChatGPT produces some alerts and errors.

I went to that Apple link. It says:

Starting with macOS Catalina, your Mac uses zsh as the default login shell and interactive shell. You can make zsh the default in earlier versions of macOS as well…
• zsh (Z shell) is the default shell for all newly created user accounts, starting with macOS Catalina.
• bash is the default shell in macOS Mojave and earlier.

macOS Catalina was released in 2019, over half a decade ago. ChatGPT is suggesting a login shell and commands that didn’t work when I tried them because they are no longer used. Of the three lines ChatGPT selected, the only one that works in my Terminal (macOS 14) is the last command, diskutil. 

I do agree that it’s best to put each fast drive should be on a separate controller to maximize performance and reliability, but normally they shouldn’t spontaneously disconnect no matter how they’re plugged in. When I do have spontaneous disconnections (which are now rare for me), it’s usually more related to how the devices are combined through a hub, or a cable or enclosure that’s become defective and needs to be replaced.

While I have not tried ChatGPT for Lightroom Classic problems, I have tried it for other computer-related problems and was always extremely disappointed in the results.

So my verdict on this ChatGPT interaction is also "extremely disappointed". In particular, the "Real World Best Practice" makes no sense. Backing up with a different backup software does not prevent corruption or improper ejections. Nothing stated by ChatGPT can fix catalog corruption, although it may (I am skeptical) prevent some future catalog corruptions. Certainly catalog corruptions can happen regardless of what drives are plugged in where.

As for the rest of this ChatGPT output, I do not use a Mac so I don't really have background knowledge, but it sure SOUNDS LIKE gibberish and bluster. Many AI chatbots come off sounding extremely confident in their diagnosis and solution, when in fact they aren't even close, and I think that is what we see here. 

Except this doesn't work with a Mac mini or MacBook Air.