Q: Disk not ejected properly

Just to continue this epic thread.  After months of irritation at my iSCSI drive being reported as 'not safely ejected'.  This appears to have cured this.

 

(iSCSI is a network drive in my NAS box that I use for Time Machine.)

 

Config:  MBPRO, 10.9.5

...

Apologies for such a long previous post - was trying to help someone else hitting the 24th page of this.   I've just had the dreaded '.. disk not ejected ..' box pop up.  Sadly, this fix (removing/recreating /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration) did not work for me.  I am unable to edit my original post now.

I had the same problem with a Mac mini (late 2009 4GB) and 2 FW HD (G-Tech and MyBook) after upgrading from Snow to Mavericks (running from G-Tech).

This helped me (found this on a forum at work; several restarts and sleeps later still working normally):

Problem:

Disk 'not properly ejected' error message after system sleep

(HD USB/FW on OS X 10.7-10.9)

Solution:

First, eject your external HD(s) properly (reboot or remount if necessary to do so)

Then perform the following actions:

1 - System controller reset:

Power down and unplug all power for a minute or 2

2 - PRAM reset:

Power on, immediately press and hold Command+Option+P+R

until you hear the 2nd startup chime

(I had to choose the startup disk after this, as Mavericks resides on an external drive, and Snow is still on the internal one.

Energy Saver settings: Computer sleep: never; put hard disks to sleep: yes; wake for network: yes; start up after down: no)

This worked for me - 24 hours now with no 'disk not ejected' warnings.  

Its very low level so only recommended if you're comfortable at the command line on your Mac, have backups to recover from & understand a bit about the internals of the OS.

This is a long post about all the options available at the time (2013) for sleep/wakeup and external drives.  http://www.atpeaz.com/index.php/2013/automaticlly-eject-external-disks-on-sleep- reconnect-after-os-x/

It mentions a free utility called SleepWatcher.  I have applied that piece of the post.  It ejects my network drive on sleep, and remounts it on wakeup.

Hurray. 

This is a workaround, NOT a solution. Please try the two (identical) tried and tested posts before, also, disconnect power from your machine OVERNIGHT - at least 8 hours- after resetting PRAM/nvRAM/SMC and applying the fix, just to see if it is fixed. This prolonged disconnect from the power (along with the previous fix on this forum) got my USB3.0 x 4 ports all sleeping perfectly.

SleepWatcher is more for hackintosh setups, with dodgy USB ownership issues. This should not happen on real Apple Macs !

This is a workaround, NOT a solution. Please try the two (identical) tried and tested posts before, also, disconnect power from your machine OVERNIGHT - at least 8 hours- after resetting PRAM/nvRAM/SMC and applying the fix, just to see if it is fixed. This prolonged disconnect from the power (along with the previous fix on this forum) got my USB3.0 x 4 ports all sleeping perfectly.

 

SleepWatcher is more for hackintosh setups, with dodgy USB ownership issues. This should not happen on real Apple Macs !

It works for me with the stated caveats.  Lose the attitude man.   

This is an iSCSI drive hosted on a NAS box, no USB ports involved..   

There is working natively, and then there is workarounds... yours sir, is a workaround.

Yours sounds like a network issue (assuming it appears as a network volume), so the fix mentioned earlier may work for you (if you combine it with the big three - reset PRAM/nvRAM & SMC, apply the fix mentioned, leave the power off (everything) overnight - and then see if it still works.

PS. Do you get the identical "Drive could not be ejected" message?

Sorry I didn't research your earlier posts, I did read them but didn't connect you with them when I replied.

Please accept my apologies for the attitude, it was unintended.

PPS. You may wish to repair permissions on your boot volume (and even your NAS volumes) and see if that is what is causing it?! worth a try.

best of luck!

Just incase that doesn't work, after buying lots of usb3 enclosures and trying load of hard disks i found a solution that works on my 5k iMac...

1. Disable "put hard disks to sleep when possible" in energy saver

and

2. Using a usb3 hub inbetween the hard disk caddy and the mac. (I'm using a anker 3 port usb3 hub with gigabit port)

I found that ejects would start on a newley formatted disk when large file transfers ere happening, then then once the ejects started they would become more frequent until the external disk outlentmount any more. If i don't do one of the above options i get ejects either when i don't use the hub or when the mac wakes from sleep.

I have been following the voluminous thread of this topic. I have a late 2013 MacBook Pro, OSX 10.9.5.  In my case the problem appears to lie with the USB 3.0 cable of the disk enclosure. Details are as follows:

I had replaced the MBP"s internal hard disk with a Samsung EVO 840 solid state drive, and intended to use the removed hard disk as a back-up. The Samsung came with a very simple USB3 cable with a SATA connector, about 3 ins. long. I bought a disk enclosure for this backup hard disk but on pluggin it into my computer the DNEP message would appear within a minute and then the hard disk icon completely disappeared without a trace even in Finder.  I tried various procedures like rebooting, letting it be unplugged for a few hours etc. all to no avail.  However, when I use the simple USB cable that came with the Samsung EVO sad, it worked perfectly. When the computer is put to sleep and then reawakened the hard disk is there on the screen and no DNEP message.  I have done this now for a while, copying files from the SSD to the hard drive.  I also did the Timed Back-up with this littlel USB cable with no problems whatsoever, but I have to be extremely careful as there is no disk enclosure.   

Wow, a 25 page reply to this problem! One wonders what Apple can do about this as it appears to be an OS issue with firmware from my testing.

To chime in and offer my testing results:

1. Had this problem with my Seagate USB drive and it finally died last month.

2. Bought an identical DataTale enclosure to one I currently have that allows me to easily swap hard drives (nice feature).  Figured the eject problem was due to the old Seagate Time Machine HD on it's last breath. Nope,  same issue with the new enclosure and HD on 2nd bus of e-Sata card on my 2008 Mac Pro.

3. Hooked up my FW800 bus to eliminate the possibility of a bad e-Sata channel.  Problem still persisted :-( At least not a communication issue with the e-Sata channel :-)

4. Switched e-Sata buses from one enclosure to the other.  Problem still persisted on same volume.  So, not the e-Sata channel or cables.

5. Switched hard drives from one enclosure to the other. BINGO…problem now moved over to new volume!  This indicates an issue with the enclosure, most likely a firmware issue since this problem is so widespread. I tested it many times to verify, definitely an issue with the enclosure, not the type of bus, since this issue has occurred under USB2, USB3-PCI card, FW800 and e-Sata-PCI card or the cables for that matter (even though some have reported it fixed their problem).

To Summarize:  There appears to be an issue with the OS and firmware of the enclosures.  This is happening for OS users on L, ML, M, and the new Y.  This issue is not necessarily caused by bad cables or hardware, other than perhaps some small issue with how the OS communicates with the enclosure's firmware when it goes to sleep.

I'll have to breeze through these 25 pages and see what seems to be working for others and try it.  I'll also take my new enclosure to my friend who can run the Windows 7 latest DataTale firmware updater to bring the FW up to the same as the enclosure that is working properly. Perhaps a clean install is in order too, since I haven't done so for ages.  I'm a bit hesitant to try that as the machine is so stable except for this one issue.

This is really annoying and I had no idea how widespread this problem is…25 pages of users having the same issue!!!

Get involved Apple..please.

I haven't had the luxury of being able to test a variety of enclosures, but I think the general issue is mostly with USB3, with some being affected by others protocols too.

I think I agree with you though, it does seem to be a software/firmware issue with some drives and controllers not working well with Mac OS X. My own setup is using a four bay drive box, which has FW800 and USB3 ports for each drive, FW800 connected to a Thunderbolt adapter has been 100% reliable here. I can also connect using USB2, and still no problems, other than slower speeds. USB3 immediately causes trouble, with drives disconnecting as soon as the Mac goes to sleep mode. However, is sometimes random too, with usually a couple of the drive disconnecting every time, while the others only disconnect sometimes.

However, IIRC FW always did have issues too, and it was always advised to get 'Oxford' chipsets in the controllers. USB as a whole has always been an issue on Macs, as they implemented the USB system different to other platforms, which often caused compatibility and performance issues.

USB3 does seem to be a right old mine field though, with even some complaining on Windows machines too.

TBH, my system works so well under FW800/Thunderbolt, that I see no point in throwing time, effort and money in trying to solve the problem with USB3. It'd be nice to pick up a bit of extra speed from the external drives, but it's not critical to my needs.

And, FWIW, to confirm it's more a USB3 issue, I have a couple of USB3 hubs, and both of those cause problems with sleep mode, even with no devices plugged in.

It is a real mess this.

Cheers

Also being a member of this club i quickly went threw the 25 pages of thread...  but a question i did not see answered was... Is this error anything but just a nuisance?   Has there bee any damage or loss of data because of this?

I have not had any data loss or corruption.  In my opinion, this is a firmware/software issue with OSX.  Normally, when your machine goes into deep sleep,  the firmware/chipset keeps the drive connected to the OS, so that when it wakes up, the drive is still there.  It appears that some firmware/chipset combinations lose this connection during deep sleep which is why one gets the disconnect warning upon waking up. 

Since OSX has several different communication protocols: USB2 and 3, FW400 and 800, eSata and Thunderbolt, the firmware may stay connected with one. but not the others. For example, my DataTale drive can function on USB2, FW800 and eSata buses. If I use FW800 or eSata, the drive disconnects from the OS as soon as it goes into deep sleep, thus the disconnect warning when the OS wakes up. However, when connected with USB2, it stays connected and I don't get the warning.  Funny thing is, I used to get the warning with an old Seagate running on USB2, but that drive soon failed, so I figured it was the drive going south, but now I get the warning with a new enclosure and hard drive. If I shut down and restart the enclosure, the drive mounts again and works with no problem, which reinforces my theory of it being a firmware/hardware issue with deep sleep.

It's worth mentioning again that I have an identical drive enclosure that was FW updated and it doesn't have a problem on any of the different buses.  I suspect a problem in the FW or chipset in the latest enclosure that is disconnecting me. Since I just use the 2nd enclosure for Time Machine BU, USB2 is fast enough, but I would prefer to run it on my 2nd eSata channel.

As mentioned in a prior post, I've run tests between the two enclosures to eliminate cable, hard drive and enclosure issues. That's not to say a bad cable isn't the culprit, as some users have said,  it fixed the problem. However, I think for the vast amount of users with this issue, it's a firmware/hardware issue with OSX.

Try a different enclosure or communication bus to see how it performs on your system.  This is a pretty widespread problem with 25 pages of replies.  Id like to see  Apple chime in and help us with a solution.

I have had issues, yes. while connected to USB3, my Lightroom images were very iffy (on a dedicated drive), losing the ability to save images, or edits, or create new folders. I could read the drive OK though. Reconnecting to FW800 via a Thunderbolt adapter was fine.

My Time Machine drive started cropping up with directory errors, and appeared to be a drive hardware failure. Again, reconnecting to FW800 works fine, and I had to reformat the drive and restart my Time Machine backup.

I've also had various errors appearing in the System logs when almost anything is connected using USB3, even an empty powered hub - causes random wake up calls and crashes. The same hubs connected using USB2 have no problems at all.

Although I haven't been able to try many different USB interfaces, the hard drive units are all different brands/models and show the same symptoms.

In the end I decided not to throw more money at the problem, and just stick with FW800, which has no problems whatsoever.

Cheers

Andy

This just goes to show how varied this problem is since it affects so many users in different ways.  I wish FW800 would work for me, I was rather surprised when it had the same issue.  Now that you mention it, my Time Machine BU did get corrupted once and I had to erase and reconfigure all over again. Plus, It actually has disconnected on USB2  a couple times, but so seldom, that using that port has been sort of a fix for the most part.   On eSata and FW800, the enclosure consistantly disconnects every time the computer goes into deep sleep.  Since the same exact enclosure (not sure about chipset to FW) doesn't have the problem, I may send the unit back while it's under warranty.  I just want it to work reliably on one of the ports. 

I have this problem most days when I first wake up the computer.  I just tried Robin's suggestion from the beginning of the thread -- does anyone know if it is necessary to delete the System Configuration folder from Library? It no longer moves the folder when you drag it out of Library, it seems to copy it. 

I also have an APC backup, but the master/controlled switch behavior is turned off so I don't think that would be the problem. 

I use Time Machine Editor to only backup in the middle of the night, so that is probably contributing to my problem, but I don't want Time Machine making hourly backups.  I would like to find a solution, worried about corrupting data...