External LaCie hard drive has problems with mounting

I have a very large FCP X Library, on a large external LaCie HD - a LaCie d2 Professional -  that also has all my media on it.
My laptop is a MacBook Pro, bought just late in 2021 -  the chip is an Apple M1 Pro, and I'm using OS Monterey. 
All of my media has been imported as is (UHD) into the LaCie drive, not converted to other formats.
The problem is: often my HD won't mount. Then I run Disc Utility, and First Aid fails on it. 
But after a few more tries it mounts. But then often, during editing, it unmounts. 
And sometimes, it gives a message, "this Library cannot be saved - there is not enough room in the designated location". But I look, and the LaCie has maybe 300 GB empty space, and my laptop itself, as at least 80 GB or more of empty space.

Is this a problem of the hard drive itself? Or the fact that all my media has been imported in its original UHD state? Or something else?

How can I change things around so this doesn't keep happening, wasting many hours of me trying again and again to successfully mount the hard drive?
thanks!

80 GB free space is almost nothing. MacOS needs extra space for paging files, etc. As a general rule it's good to have 20% free disk space. 

If your hard drive will not mount, that is not an FCP issue but a hardware or MacOS issue. We specialize in FCP here but we can try to give you some advice on hardware and MacOS.

Use only the USB-C cables that came with the device. When troubleshooting a problem do not use a USB hub of any type -- plug the drive directly into the USB-C port on the Mac.

First Aid will often initially fail because it cannot get an exclusive lock on the drive. The answer is shut down all other apps and try again. If that doesn't work, reboot the machine and try again. If that doesn't work, reboot in recovery mode, select Options>Disk Utility and run it in that mode. To boot to recovery mode on Apple Silicon, shut down then press and hold the power button until it gives you the options.

You can often free up disk space by deleting FCP cache files and by turning off background rendering.

Omnidisk Sweeper is good free tool to scan your drives to find what is consuming space:  www.omnigroup.com/more

I have a very large FCP X Library, on a large external LaCie HD - a LaCie d2 Professional - that also has all my media on it.

The first thing to say here is that it is extremely important you have an exact copy of this Library on some other drive in case the LaCie HD completely fails and loses all its data. If it is having trouble mounting that is not a good sign.

So, before trying to work out why you are having problems make a complete backup of the Library onto a new external drive. The cost of having duplicate drives is tiny compared to the cost of losing hours of work and unique media.

I had a drive that was doing the same thing. I checked it with a drive utility, IIRC Techtool, and saw that the S.M.A.R.T data showed a lot of overheating and drive read and other errors. I backed it up to a new drive and then recycled it.

All the files were also on another drive. Rotating drives do wear out.

How long you plan on tickling fate before it's no longer a laughing matter? You'll only see such warnings a few times before you never see them, or your files, again.



I'm currently  experimenting with this drive. Transferred all important data to another one and keeping an eye on the diagnostics. Been this way for over a year but I'm not foolish enough to rely on it for anything I can't live without.