I don't know about thunderbolt, but the Apple Silicon macs I help my clients with have something really wrong and screwed up with how macOS or the firmware deals with USB 3.1+ external drives with constant disconnects despite sleeping hard-drives setting turned off etc. Searching on forums leads to similar issues others are having.
What brand and model of drive? This sounds similar to a hardware defect in some SanDisk Extreme SSDs; IIRC it was caused by firmware and/or overheating.
