How to resolve AppleAHICIDDiskQueueManager timeouts and kernel panics on iMac with external SSD?

Well, thank you!

I'll attach the DriveDx report in the Additional Text below. Don't understand it much but there appears to be a lot of green and no red in the report, so it doesn't look too bad to me.

I haven't restarted yet. :)

Uh oh. I ran into a different problem and don't know how to resolve it.

I followed the instructions of DriveDx and installed the Smart Drivers for external SSD. After installation, I went into System Preferences/Security/General and allowed software from kirill luzanov (as the instructions said) then rebooted.

But the reboot failed. It kept trying and failing. I had to boot it into Safe Mode. The errors are below.

The BadHD volume is still in tact so it's a different problem now. Since it happened right after I installed the DriveDx smart drivers I'm sure those drivers are causing this.

I followed the DriveDx instructions and removed the smart drivers (basically removed 2 folders in /Library).

That didn't fix the problem. I still have to boot into Safe Mode.

I went back to System Preferences/Security/General but don't see the message about "software from kirill luzanov" anymore.

Any idea?

Sorry for the late response. I was a little bit reluctant initially to reboot because it had been running so well.

I think the problem is fixed. First, I restarted.

Second, I shut down and started.

Third, I shut down, unplugged, waited for an hour, plugged it back in and started it.

This morning, I shut it down, waited for 15 minutes then started it.

In all 4 cases, I never got the "Could not read the attached drive: Eject, Ignore, Initialize." The BadHD volume showed up as unmounted in all cases. For the last time I was a little worried because the Log in process gave me the spining rainbow wheel for about a minute or so. But it finally came up fine.

Thank you again for your help!

So:

1. The trick is to find the disk identifier, create a small volume and change the automount to exclude it at boot.
2. The problem is indeed with the dead internal drive. The First Aid errors on the external boot SSD are just red herring.
3. The Safe Mode might have done something to cause my HD to show up. Since it was broken a year ago it had never showed up once as a 2tb drive.

I intend to pursue the First Aid errors on the external boot SSD to see if there's anything wrong with it. I will probably log a different question for that.

Thank you so much for your knowledge and willingness to help.

This problem is getting stranger by the day. Yesterday morning, I tried booting up in Safe Mode to see if it makes a difference. The Safe Mode was very very slow as expected, then I put it in Sleep mode. Half an hour later it crashed and got rebooted into Normal mode. I checked the error and it was the same kernel panic. Then I left it to go to work.

Surprisingly when I got home (and until this morning) it was still ok. It hasn't crashed yet. I do remember that when I logged in the last time I did not get the "Could not read the drive attached. Eject. Ignore. Initialize...". So I used Disk Utility to see if I can locate the identifier the dead hard drive. Guess what, the drives changed from the last picture I posted. I can now "see" the dead hard drive of 2 tb, which for a fact I was never able to since a year ago. I'll attach a picture for that.

As you can see from the above, it is different from the last time. I've yet to figure out how to find the identifier of that drive to do the trick you showed. But currently it hasn't crashed anymore and I'm afraid to restart it because the problem could happen again.

So... did the Safe Mode fix it? Should I try creating a small partition on it? I'm pretty that drive is dead.

Again, thank you so much.

Your first command works. And I used the instructions to turn off the automount on that BadHD volume.

This is the output of the command:

$ diskutil  partitionDisk disk1 2 GPT jhfs+  BadHD 50M  free  FREE  R
Started partitioning on disk1
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Waiting for partitions to activate
Formatting disk1s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name BadHD
Initialized /dev/rdisk1s2 as a 48 MB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume with a 512k journal
Mounting disk
Finished partitioning on disk1

This is what Disk Utility shows me:

Then this is how I turned off the automount:

$ diskutil info /Volumes/BadHD
   Device Identifier:         disk1s2
   Device Node:               /dev/disk1s2
   Whole:                     No
   Part of Whole:             disk1

   Volume Name:               BadHD
   Mounted:                   Yes
   Mount Point:               /Volumes/BadHD

   Partition Type:            Apple_HFS
   File System Personality:   Journaled HFS+
   Type (Bundle):             hfs
   Name (User Visible):       Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
   Journal:                   Journal size 512 KB at offset 0x3000
   Owners:                    Enabled

   OS Can Be Installed:       No
   Media Type:                Generic
   Protocol:                  SATA
   SMART Status:              Verified
   Volume UUID:               B7383C43-39AC-3BD0-9A59-ECA663955C2A
   Disk / Partition UUID:     E285062F-3719-42B3-BF11-CC8C566CAE01
   Partition Offset:          209735680 Bytes (409640 512-Byte-Device-Blocks)

   Disk Size:                 50.0 MB (49999872 Bytes) (exactly 97656 512-Byte-Units)
   Device Block Size:         512 Bytes

   Volume Total Space:        50.0 MB (49999872 Bytes) (exactly 97656 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Used Space:         1.7 MB (1708032 Bytes) (exactly 3336 512-Byte-Units) (3.4%)
   Volume Free Space:         48.3 MB (48291840 Bytes) (exactly 94320 512-Byte-Units) (96.6%)
   Allocation Block Size:     4096 Bytes

   Media OS Use Only:         No
   Media Read-Only:           No
   Volume Read-Only:          No

   Device Location:           Internal
   Removable Media:           Fixed

   Solid State:               No
   Hardware AES Support:      No

#
# Warning - this file should only be modified with vifs(8)
#
# Failure to do so is unsupported and may be destructive.
#
UUID=63832A19-19A6-3D8C-A9EE-B3FCE8181281 none hfs rw,noauto
UUID=B7383C43-39AC-3BD0-9A59-ECA663955C2A none hfs rw,noauto

$ sudo automount -vc
automount: /System/Volumes/Data/home updated (/home -> /System/Volumes/Data/home)
automount: no unmounts

I haven't restarted yet :)

I'll do that later and let you know if the problem is fixed.

Thanks for sharing again.

Thank you so much for your insights. I really appreciate it.

The rotating hard drive died last year as I mentioned. Since it was a Fusion drive the spinning portion died but the SSD part is still there and I can access it. I haven't taken it out yet. So your thinking that this remnant of the old hard drive is the problem makes perfect sense. The Samsung T9 external was put in last year so I didn't expect it to have problems that soon.

I will follow your link when I get home tonight.

But just another question here. When I booted it I got an error message (beside the message about the crash report) saying the drive could not be read and presented with 3 choices: Eject, Ignore, Initialize. I ALWAYS thought that the message is pertaining to the external SSD since it is being used as a system drive. Therefore, I always clicked Ignore. Should I try clicking Eject and solve the problem? (haha...)

Thank you so much for your response. So sorry for being late to reply. I always thought I would get an email when somebody replied to my question. But this time no email whatsoever. I happened to go back to the post and found yours and HWTech's reply.

I replied to HWTech in the above. Do you think if I click Eject it will solve the problem. I'm currently away from home so can't try it yet.

I'll attach the crash report here for completeness.

First, quick status updates on easy items.

I clicked on Eject instead of Ignore. That didn't make any difference.

Second, I followed the link and tried to disable the SSD portition of the dead Fusion drive from mounting. I attached a picture of that portion. Sure enough, after I used the automount command from the link and disable the UUID of that "Untitled" volume it came up unmounted next time the system rebooted. However, it still crashed after 20 minutes or so with the same kernel panic.

I don't see the whole hard drive. What I see is in the picture and I assume the spinning portion is no longer accessible. Just the SSD part. So I don't know whether I can create a tiny partition as you suggested.

Here's another experiment.

I was thinking that I would need to take it to a store and have the physical dead drive removed. Before doing that I rebooted in Recovery and did First Aid on the Samsung external T9 volumes.

The Macintosh HD passed. But the Macintosh HD Data failed. The exit code is 8. The last line says could not verify or repair: -69845.

The Samsung T9 is 2tb and I'm only using 500G or so.

You did say that the AHCI kernel panic is internal drive. So I'm not sure the First Aid failure is just red herring and I still have to take it to a store to have the physical drive removed.

Here's the output of diskutil list:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

  #:            TYPE NAME          SIZE    IDENTIFIER

  0:   GUID_partition_scheme            *121.3 GB  disk0

  1:            EFI ⁨EFI⁩           314.6 MB  disk0s1

  2:         Apple_HFS ⁨Untitled⁩        120.9 GB  disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):

  #:            TYPE NAME          SIZE    IDENTIFIER

  0:   GUID_partition_scheme            *2.0 TB   disk1

  1:            EFI ⁨EFI⁩           209.7 MB  disk1s1

  2:         Apple_APFS ⁨⁩            2.0 TB   disk1s2

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):

  #:            TYPE NAME          SIZE    IDENTIFIER

  0:   GUID_partition_scheme            *2.0 TB   disk2

  1:            EFI ⁨EFI⁩           209.7 MB  disk2s1

  2:         Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk3⁩     2.0 TB   disk2s2

/dev/disk3 (synthesized):

  #:            TYPE NAME          SIZE    IDENTIFIER

  0:   APFS Container Scheme -           +2.0 TB   disk3

                 Physical Store disk2s2

  1:        APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD - Data⁩   582.4 GB  disk3s1

  2:        APFS Volume ⁨Preboot⁩         2.1 GB   disk3s2

  3:        APFS Volume ⁨Recovery⁩        1.1 GB   disk3s3

  4:        APFS Volume ⁨VM⁩           1.1 MB   disk3s4

  5:        APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD⁩      21.2 GB  disk3s5

  6:       APFS Snapshot ⁨com.apple.os.update-...⁩ 21.2 GB  disk3s5s1