I have three of these I've collected over the last 3 years, and none of them work anymore.
Is this the new USB-C future we were promised? With a single-point of failure for everything as the number of ports on laptop decreases year-on-year?
The answer is, you have to buy a Proper ™️ one.
With active cooling, a power supply, and proper Lightning etc. support.
I buy Dell WD19TB units second hand from CeX for about £60. New, they cost several hundred.
Even then, they have issues (fans staying on, and a STUPID bug where turning off the machine causes power-off packets to spam the network).
But for general work, they're very reliable.