Hello to every single tortured soul encountering this plaguing problem on MacOS. For me it happens at seemingly random times, on my brand new MacBook Pro 14", with M1 Pro chip, Monterey 12.2.1 (21D62). Yesterday I lost 90 minutes of very precious time, working on a deadline, trying to make my external ADATA SSD work. I constantly had it "not properly ejected" by the system. Tried messing with power settings, restarting the laptop, but with no luck. THE ONLY thing that seems to have helped is the following: Plugging the external drive into the MacBook Waiting for it to be recognized by the system Ejecting it in Finder. Unplugging the drive physically Plugging in again Since I did this "magic" I had no new connection problems. I hope this is a temporary workaround and that this might help someone else. Cheers!