I bought a SanDisk 64gb flash drive and every time I plug it into my M1 MB air (2020) it gets extremely hot to the point I cannot touch it. It sometimes gets a little warm when I have it plugged into a windows desktop but never as hot as the Mac, even just idling.
If there is any information needed I would be happy to reply back with said information included.
MacBook Air (M1, 2020)
The USB ports on the 2020 M1 MacBook Air can deliver up to 15W of power (5V at 3A) when using USB-C Power Delivery (USB-PD). This is typical for most USB-C ports that support the USB-PD standard, allowing the port to provide more power to connected devices, such as charging smartphones, tablets, or other peripherals.
For standard USB 3.1 Gen 2 devices that don’t support USB-PD, the power output is usually around 4.5W (5V at 0.9A). This lower power output is sufficient for most standard peripherals like mice, keyboards, and external hard drives.
... so it may be possible that the Mac is "seeing" this flash drive as requiring USB-PD power.
I have the same problem, same flash drive. I don't believe it's a defective flash drive. There's something else going on here.
FWIW. In my experience with all brands of flash drives, I have never had any that got hot whether they were connected to a Mac, or a Window / Linux PC. I've only had this experience with external HDD and only when there is a lot of read/write activity going on.
Might it be possible that this particular flash drive is defective?
It did it with a few other USB drives as well. Could it be that it's mistaking it as something thats taking power from the MacBook and the laptop is sending too much power?
USB flash drive getting almost too hot to the touch.
