Buyers of the new Apple silicon 2023 Mac Pro might find that their SATA hard drives don't necessarily behave as they expected them to. Apple says that it's aware of the issue and is working on a fix.
The issue, Apple says, is caused when some SATA hard drives disconnect from the Mac Pro when it wakes from sleep. Macs that never go to sleep won't be impacted by this issue, however.
Thankfully, Apple is aware of the issue and it intends to have a fix for the problem in a "future macOS update." It isn't clear when that update will be made available, but there are some steps that can be taken to try and work around the bug for now.
No sleep for you
Apple confirmed the issue in a support document, spotted by MacRumors, suggesting that only some internal SATA drives will be affected.
"Certain models of internal SATA drives might unexpectedly disconnect from your computer after your Mac wakes from sleep," Apple's support document reads. "This can occur if your Mac automatically goes to sleep or if you manually put your Mac to sleep. If you see a message that your disk was not ejected properly, you can restart your Mac to reconnect to the drive."
The fix, for now at least, is to disable the Mac Pro's automatic sleep feature entirely until the fix has been implemented.
The 2023 Mac Pro is the first to sport Apple silicon, of course. It uses the M2 Ultra, a chip that is also available in the high-end Mac Studio. In fact, that could be the best Mac for a lot of people thanks to its lower price — assuming you don't need things like these internal SATA connectors that seem to be causing the Mac Pro problems right now.
The new M2 Ultra Mac Pro is available now, starting at $6,999.
