Originally posted in the linux community but wanted to expand my results a bit. Hopefully this isnt considered tech support since the problem is already solved and I just want information. (Copy & pasted) Still new to linux hope its ok to ask here. I decided to replace one of my backup drives for the first time in 5ish years with a new 2.5" HDD meant for internal use but in an enclosure (the enclosure works fine). I formatted it in ntfs via gparted and everything went as expected, I even created a large veracrypt container file. I safely removed the drive and after a few hours I re-connected it and it made the notification noise that indicates the drive was detected but it’s filesystem wasn’t mounted. It showed up in gparted, disks and lsblk (as sdb1). Searched online and learned to manually mount it in the /mnt/ directory but I didnt want to manually do that everytime. I ended up reformatting it and for good measure, connected to another port and boom it mounted once connected. Decided not to create the file container or even incorporate the drive into my backup strategy yet until I get input whether or not this is a hardware issue or software. So what do you guys think happened? Not sure what info to provide.

Edit: the filesystem and encryption software I chose is for compatibility between my devices and both machines have the proper software to support that filesystem

Edit 2: new errors relating to my hardware started showing up when further proceeding with my plan so I’m just going to return it and try again