However, DriveDx had no problem reading any of the USB drives on my Systems and IIRC there was a note the USB "driver" was now compatible with Apple Silicon.
None of which contributes anything towards curing kevs's problem, while reinstalling the driver may.
According to
https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver, the driver hasn't been updated in 8 years, so I'm not sure what "now compatible with Apple Silicon" means.