I recently bought an M2 Mac mini and have been having issues with external drives.
An external hard drive suddenly ejected from my Mac and stopped being recognized by any device. I replaced it, formatted the new one as exFAT for Mac/Windows compatibility, but it later stopped mounting on my Mac even though the format hadn’t changed.
Now, files copied from my Mac to USB drives appear corrupted when opened on Windows PCs. My another exFAT external drive also worked on my Mac but later showed errors on Windows.
Is my Mac causing these drive corruptions, or is this a file system/USB compatibility issue?
Your Mac is very unlikely to be physically corrupting external drives. This sounds more like a file system corruption or connection issue.
Since you are moving drives between macOS and Windows, make sure they are formatted as exFAT and properly ejected before unplugging. An interrupted write process or unstable USB connection can corrupt the file system, which may cause Windows to report errors later.
You can try:
Connect the drive directly to the Mac mini instead of using a USB hub or adapter.
Run Disk Utility → First Aid on the external drive.
Test with another USB cable/port.
Check whether the same issue happens with a completely different drive.
If multiple drives fail only when connected to this Mac, then investigate the USB hardware or peripherals. But in most cases, it is caused by exFAT errors or unsafe disconnects, not macOS itself.