A question for my computer geek friends

[thewayne]

I'm having the weirdest thing happen with a particular backup device for my Mac, and I don't think it's Mac specific, so bear with me if you're a PC or *nix person.

I'm backing up four Macs, an iMac and three laptops. I have two backup drives, an 8 TB and a USB hard drive dock that I plug a 5 TB bare drive in to. And that dock has been absolutely fine since I got it.

So far, so good.

The issue started in January. For reasons that are too tedious to go in to, I had to upgrade my iMac from an old Mac OS to the latest, Monterrey. At that point something happened and every time I plug in the dock, the computer freaks out and loses Bluetooth connectivity with the keyboard and trackpad!

Weird, eh?!

That same dock works fine with the other three laptops. And the 8 TB works fine with all four computers.

Now, a friend of mine, when he does OS upgrades - not updates - always disconnects his Time Machine backup drives as he's had some terrible problems in the past. And that's what I did when I did my Monterrey install. He's had the backup drive corrupt on him, and I wanted to make sure I had a solid fallback point. And now that drive is inaccessible.

The iMac itself is a 2015 27" 5K iMac, and is exhibiting display problems. Very rarely, but on at least two occasions in the last year or so. And it's clearly out of warranty. It behaves if I plug in an external monitor, so it should have some life left in it yet. Still, that does demonstrate that there is something slightly wrong inside, and if one thing is wrong, there could be more than one thing wrong.

I'm not too worried about the contents of the 5 TB bare drive as the backup is now refreshed on the 8 TB drive. I'm just curious what people's thoughts might be. But basically, if I plug in the 5 TB drive and dock, I'm looking at a power switch power-off situation. Which really sucks.

Thoughts?

Comments

[lovelyangel]

I'm just here to say... I haven't a clue, in spite of a 38-year history with Macs. I hate these kinds of problems.

[thewayne]

Tell me about it!  I can't claim 38 years of Mac experience, but a similar amount of time with computers in general.  One of my favorites was a box of bus strips where the end outlet was guaranteed to fail.  And I remember PCs where you couldn't put certain cards in certain slots because of timing or power issues.  But those were back in the '80s and '90s, computers are somewhat better designed and made these days.

[mtbc]

I was thinking some USB subsystem kernel issue (or even buggy hardware needing firmware update) until reading further. More general issues can point to marginal power supply, they are a prime culprit for unreliability. I've no relevant Mac experience though.

[thewayne]

Power supply is an interesting thought.  The drive dock has its own, so it's not like it's drawing from the iMac.  I would think one of the other laptops would complain if it had issues with power.  I'm going to be posting this on a couple of other forums next week: I'm heading to Phoenix for a couple of days on Thursday and can only ponder it for now, can't do much with it at the mo.  I took the 8 TB back to work, so it's tucked away safely.  My wife leaves tomorrow for a few days in Colorado, so if the house burns down while we're gone, data is safe.  Then again, all of our computers except the iMac will be traveling with us.  My Windows PC is backed up using different mechanisms, my Mac laptop will be with me.

[mtbc]

I've wondered how well my drives would survive with zipped into the fireproof bag, maybe not wonderfully in the event of an actual fire, after all paper can probably take higher temperatures!

Annoyingly, I had twenty years of keeping backup drives at work but don't at my current place given the real prospect of a search by armed perimeter security and my explaining, oh, yes, I'm just taking this encrypted data out of a DoE facility. (-:

[thewayne]

Heh.  Yeah, that could possibly be problematic.  When I worked for the state, we had a warehouse behind our building and every month, IIRC (it was late '80s) I would take the first Monday's tape and put it in a fire-proof file cabinet in said warehouse so it was off-site.  The warehouse was a good 500 yards or more away, so it was extremely unlikely a fire would take out both.  A big explosion or plane crash would be a different story.  At the police department, I think we sent tapes with the mainframe tapes to the property warehouse in rotation, which was miles away.  And that was the end of my involvement as a LAN admin.  After that, it was no longer my monkey, my circus.  I did used to have an add'l drive here that lived in my fireproof lockbox that houses my passport and some other important papers, but that drive no longer exists.

[mtbc]

One of my old backup drives is now plugged into my PVR. (-: Back before using the portable drives, I could get a lot backed up onto a single DVD-RAM if I omitted the standard operating system stuff.

[disneydream06]

Well, we all know you are not going to get an answer from me. LOL!!!!!!!!!!!
Hugs, Jon

[silveradept]

It may very well be silly code things happening, but if it were possible to do, Is suggest plugging the Bluetooth stuff into a different USB port on the computer, preferably the one farthest away from where the duck plugs in, just to rule out any sort of power draw issues that result from too many possible things in the same hub, even if most things are self-powered. I occasionally had trouble with a wireless keyboard working when a power-hungry flash drive was plugged into the port closest to it.

[thewayne]

Unfortunately these are direct BT Apple devices, not BT USB dongle devices.  Otherwise good suggestion, that's probably something I would have tried already.

[silveradept]

Ah, okay, then it could be all sorts of things, but from what you describe, I wouldn't be surprised if there's power shenanigans happening where a circuit that was perfectly happy believes it's being starved of energy now.

[thewayne]

I'm just not sure how an OS updated could cause a freakout now.

[silveradept]

Changed sensor thresholds or something, maybe. It's pretty difficult to figure out what all the changes am upgrade will produce.

[thewayne]

Very true!  I'm hoping to stop by an Apple store tomorrow and talk to a "Genius".  Actually, come to think of it, I'll be right by one of my favorite repair shops.  I could also stop there and talk to their geeks.  They might find it quite interesting...