External APFS-formatted SSD failure on new Mac Studio M2 Max

Well, that is a good question. This is the first time I have formatted an APFS volume. I first formatted the entire drive as APFS, (is that considered the container?) and then added a volume, with constraints of min/max size. As they both appeared as volumes on my desktop, and as two volumes in disk utility, I treated those as two volumes. Should the main drive have been treated as a container, not to receive files, and two volumes created within that container? Here is the data you requested :

Last login: Fri Jan 10 19:56:43 on console

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.

Mac-Studio:~ martenberkman$ diskutil list external

/dev/disk4 (external, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk4

   1:         Microsoft Reserved                         16.8 MB    disk4s1

   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk5         4.0 TB     disk4s2

/dev/disk5 (synthesized):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +4.0 TB     disk5

                                 Physical Store disk4s2

   1:                APFS Volume SSD berkman 4TB         1.5 TB     disk5s1

   2:                APFS Volume Studio Time Machine     500.0 GB   disk5s2

Mac-Studio:~ martenberkman$ 

Actually the plot thickens, you may find this interesting Tesserax... running a backup with Carbon Copy Cloner on the new SSD identical to the first that is corrupted. CCC warned of an issue with the disk.

In case it helped, I removed SSD from hub and plugged directly into the Mac Studio. Went ahead with the backup, it was completed successfully. Then ran First Aid, and these were the results:

"...was found to be corrupt and cannot be repaired". Tesserax, could you decipher the report to advise what aspect is corrupt, and does it correlate to corruption on other SSD?

I find it hard to believe two brand new SSD's are corrupted on first use... is this pointing to System issues?

I did have CCC take a snapshot of SSD in case that helped with recovery if needed, but the report states it is invalid.

Can the AFPS formatting be corrupt?

Signed, confused 😆

Thanks Tesserax,

I called Crucial and they advised Sonoma had some problems with corrupting SSD's. They advised me to leave the corrupted unmountable drive plugged in for eight hours so it could be indexed, but nothing changed (I do not see how it could be indexed without mounting). I am not near a Genius Bar but called support and was recommended to update OS to the latest (Sequoia) and try again. Before I upgraded I reformatted the mountable second Crucial X10 Pro drive which CCC and Disk Utility were say was having problems on one of the volumes. I used one volume on it as Time Machine, the other for media. I ran Time Machine successfully before the upgrade. I was then going to back up some work I had stored on my RAID, and CCC responded with a warning about the drive (CCC was upgraded to a version tested on Sequoia).

Out of interest, I ran First Aid on each volume, one was fine (Media),

the other (Time Machine) is corrupted and cannot be repaired

As an aside, my time Machine appears to be working successfully, though running First Aid states the volume was found to be corrupt and cannot be repaired.

This SSD was formatted under Sonoma as a backup before upgrade (maybe Sonoma is the problem?). Now that I am on Sequoia I would like to reformat the first Crucial X10 pro SSD which became corrupted and unmountable (Crucial had recommended I do this). Then I will have a place to backup data from the second drive formatted under Sonoma which is now reporting corrupted and cannot be repaired.

I wanted to select both volumes on this drive to reformat into one, but I could not select both in Disk Utility, likely because they are unmountable. On erasing independently, each volume reported an internal error occurred, operation failed.

Any workaround for this problem with erasing and formatting the volumes on the unmountable SSD? If I am successful, this would be the first SSD to be formatted under Sequoia, and I could then have a drive to which to backup data from the second SSD (which is reporting a corrupted volume created under Sonoma) before reformatting that under Sequoia.

This is all very mysterious. Any workaround for this problem with erasing and formatting the volumes on the unmountable SSD?

Thanks again SO much for any thoughts!

ps the Mac Studio was set up by migrating my account from my MacBook Pro 2019. I see in this console response a note about interactive shell zsh. If I am still in bash, can this affect integrity of how attached SSD's are formatted? Should I be updating to zsh, and will this affect integrity/operability/stability of an attached RAID created with/in what I am assuming was bash? If this is actually unrelated to my problem with the SSD corruption, just let me know and I will start/search a thread on bash/zsh elsewhere.

Very curious and grateful about any light you can shed on the question you posed about formatting of the SSD and if that can create the problems I am having, and whether there is any option of data retrieval.

Thank you Tesserax,

Zsh does not make much functional difference for me, so I will stay with bash for now.

I notice in Disk Utility I can add volumes with the Volume +/-, or with the Partition tab. Is there a difference, is one or the other more appropriate for creating APFS volumes?

Can I ascertain whether the problem with my SSD is a physical problem with the circuits, or some corruption problem created in data transfer? I am curious whether the massive number of files being renamed and moved (time lapse photo sequences) is something the Mac OS does not handle well to an external SSD?

Any recommendations on workarounds to mount the volumes, to try and salvage data, whether with Mac OS or third party apps, and how to avoid this issue in the future?

It was a very surprising first use of an SSD which is designed specifically for handing large amounts of media (photo or video) very quickly.

Thanks for any thoughts on those questions!

Not 100% sure at this time. One thing I noticed with the diskutil result is that your SSD has two partitions on the physical drive. A very small 16.4MB "Microsoft Reserved" partition (disk4s1), and the expected much larger 4TB "Apple_APFS Container disk5" (disk4s2). Not sure why the first one is there. Did you use this drive for something else prior to using it with your Mac? Maybe this could be a clue to what is happening ... but, I'm not convinced that it alone would corrupt one of your APFS Volumes.

This drive was brand new, unused when I formatted it. I just formatted a second drive, same model, and looked into the diskutil list external results, and it has exactly the same Microsoft reserved... perhaps it is baked into the design?

Only if some "perturbation in the force" occurred doing one or more of those file transfers. I'm thinking power glitch (brown out) maybe.

I am running with an APC backup, and did not notice anything erratic during transfer (12 minutes). I did quickly rename and move files after transfer complete, maybe something went awry with the size of the tasks finishing as I moved to the next one.

I don't thing a workaround will be necessary. FWIW, I typically use an AppleScript to mount my external drives to my Mac after logon. This makes sure they are available should I need them.

Is it possible to force mount the corrupted volume somehow, to attempt to retrieve files? (it is not mounting in Finder or Disk Utility)

If I understood your original post, this issue came up when you attempting to copy files from a "card" to the SSD. I'm assuming by "card," you are referring to a SD Card that would be used in a camera? If so, then I'm also assuming that you used an app to perform this copy process ... or used Finder directly to do so?

Yes from SD card with Finder. The process registered as completed, and after that I noticed files were missing and file names were arranged in a wonky order in the new folders, unlike other folders in same volume. I had already downloaded more than a dozen batches successfully.

Also going over more thoroughly the diskutil results, I see that this volume is being used for Time Machine. Is that correct? If so, are you using this same volume for both Time Machine and for other file storage ... or is this volume dedicated entirely to Time Machine only?

Yes the Time Machine volume is dedicated to Time Machine only, which had not yet been performed, and no other files were in it. My formatting process was erase, format as APFS, creating container and volume which appear as one. I then clicked add volume, to create the Time Machine volume with min/max constraints. I then copied files (doing the operation with new materials from SD cards at least 15 times, 72GB each go) via Finder into the first, original volume of the formatting process.

I did not expect a new SSD to have problems, and did not backup. I have now formatted a second SSD (same model) to perform these media download tasks, and have set up backing up during the process.

If you have any suggestions on how I might force mount or rescue data from the problem volume (which will not mount in Finder or Disk Utility), that would be much appreciated. Thank you so much for your time and input!

Strange behaviour on the new (not corrupted) Crucial 4TB SSD attached to Mac Studio M2 Max. Using Adobe Bridge, I renamed these files to be able to put images in multiple folders (created in camera numbered 1-999 in each folder) into one folder in chronological order.

All good, except in this instance, though all files selected, not all were included in name change! So I went to finder > View > date created to see in chronological order to be able to correct the naming. Which is a manual process as I find each erratic file, and name it according to the younger file, adding sequential alpha to remain in alpha numeric order in the entire image sequence.

Then the second bizarre behaviour: as you will see in this recording, files were slow to update to manual name change, would revert back to original name, then updating... the last manual name change took quite a while to take effect.

This is happening on a brand new Mac Studio M2 Max running Sonoma, to files copied in Finder from an SD card to a brand new Crucial SSD X10 pro 4TB external drive freshly formatted as a single APFS volume in APFS container.

For tech and software which should be lightning fast for such a simple operation as a manual name change, is this normal or is something bizarre going on? Thanks for any experiences or insights!

Here is a link with screen recording of the erratic file renaming behaviour. The folder does have 2700 files in it, but I would not think a single file name change would be affected by number of other files in same directory.

https://vimeo.com/1046063596/8602bb5ae8?share=copy

Thanks so much Tesserax, all your insights and time are very much appreciated! It is great to learn about the APFS file structure. It remains a mystery as to how it was corrupted. The erratic behaviour in something so simple as file renaming gives me cause for concern in what should be a very robust toolset and workflow. Fortunately all the content on the corrupted drive is reproducible, being an automated time lapse process. Just the extra time to capture and load again. But my confidence is low in handling such large volumes of critical media with the erratic behaviour in this very simple setup. On Monday Crucial support will be available and I will call and report back if I have any more insights. Curious if anyone has had similar experiences with other SSD's attached to Mac Studio M2 and OS Sonoma. BTW yes these are all brand new SSD's, serial # registered successfully with Crucial. I am using a Ugreen 10gbps hub for the SSD's, as there are only four thunderbolt ports on the Mac Studio. I wonder if that could be an issue? Thanks again for all your help Tesserax, and I will wait and see if anyone else would like to chime in.