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Level 1

4 points

Disk Drive ejecting itself

My Time Machine disk drive has been "ejecting" itself since I installed Snow Leopard. I'm not unplugging it, or turning it off. I'm not touching it.
I'm getting the following error message:
"The disk was not ejected properly. If possible, always eject a disk before unplugging it or turning it off."

My question is why would a disk drive be "ejecting" itself. I've turned off the auto backups, and unselected the drive as the backup disk. It is still "ejecting" itself which leads me to believe the problem isn't with Time Machine but with something else - something connected with Snow Leopard because this wasn't happening five days ago before I installed SL.

iMac5,1 Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Sep 9, 2009 5:40 PM

961 replies

judithnewman Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 14, 2009 7:36 AM in response to Glen Carpenter

Glen Carpenter wrote:
Well, no fix.
Logged in to report my external volume just ejected it self again.
Seems to me this is happening when I quit applications- But that might just be my imagination.
If I sleep the computer, the drive mounts itself successfully after waking and performs backups as expected, but I can't rely on this setup.

In my case it seemed to be happening when I woke the computer from sleep. It seemed to have something to do with the screen saver/energy saver. Since I've gone back to 10.5.8 and reset the screen saver/energy saver (and I have the "Put hard disks to sleep..." unchecked - if that matters at all) I've been fine for the past three days.
I'm very reluctant to return to SL - I seem to have everything running smoothly again. So I think I'm going to wait for a couple of months before attempting to update.

judithnewman Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 16, 2009 12:06 PM in response to judithnewman

Well I returned to 10.6 and updated to 10.6.1 - still have the TM ejecting problem.

After a phone call to Apple Canada yesterday I've narrowed my problem down to something happening between TM and the computer shutting down hard disks. When the computer goes to sleep the screen sleeps but the computer doesn't (I've got both set to sleep after 3 min so I can watch what's going on). The light on the lower right comes on, but doesn't go to blinking - the TM is making noises - indexing the TM disk I'm guessing - it's not doing a backup, I don't think. TM is active for more than 10 minutes. I have no idea how long it takes for the light to go to blinking (the computer to actually go to sleep - a long time - I've sat and waited, and waited (at least 15 minutes). I've finally left the room and returned after about 20 minutes and the light's now blinking. It takes a mouse click to wake the computer (I remember a movement of the mouse was all it took before I did this upgrade to SL). The screen wakes immediately, TM is still mounted on the desktop - then the Macintosh HD wakes and TM ejects and I get the error message "Disk improperly ejected..."! The TM disk remounts itself immediately and the first thing TM does is reindex the drive (at this point the info on first and latest backup is empty, until the indexing is complete). The thing is, it doesn't do it every time the computer finally goes to sleep (the light goes to blinking)!

That's as far as I've got so far. Can anybody add to this? I've been working on this nearly hourly since about 10:00 pm last evening. I'd like more information before I call Apple back.

judithnewman Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 16, 2009 2:05 PM in response to judithnewman

I may have solved this - fingers crossed - at least on my computer.
Elsewhere I encountered someone with a problem with Spotlight. I discovered that all that mysterious TM drive activity I had was Spotlight indexing the disk - a never ending task which it repeated each time TM dismounted itself. I don't need to search TM for stuff so I placed the TM disk on the "private" list. Ah-ha - no inexplicable disk activity. Now I put the computer to sleep using the power button and once the drives have gone silent I wakened the computer - all's well. Did that several times. All seems to be stable. Let you know after some more testing tomorrow. But it's looking good.

judithnewman Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 18, 2009 11:43 AM in response to judithnewman

judithnewman wrote:
I may have solved this - fingers crossed - at least on my computer.
Elsewhere I encountered someone with a problem with Spotlight. I discovered that all that mysterious TM drive activity I had was Spotlight indexing the disk - a never ending task which it repeated each time TM dismounted itself. I don't need to search TM for stuff so I placed the TM disk on the "private" list. Ah-ha - no inexplicable disk activity. Now I put the computer to sleep using the power button and once the drives have gone silent I wakened the computer - all's well. Did that several times. All seems to be stable. Let you know after some more testing tomorrow. But it's looking good.

Well, I'm still having the problem.
I've been tracking this for three days - Noting when I've put the computer to sleep, how, and for how long, and how I wake it, and what TM Preferences Window has to say. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason about this - the computer can be asleep for many hours, overnight in fact, and wake without ejecting the TM drive; it can be asleep for 5 minutes and eject it. The ejecting happens whether the "Put drives to sleep..." is checked or unchecked.

I have noticed that when I allow the computer to go to sleep on its own, it takes between 10 and 15 minutes for the power light to go to blinking mode. Initially I have a solid light. If I wake the computer while the light is solid, it wakes fine without ejecting (and I can wake it by moving the mouse). It seems that the ejecting is more likely when the power light is blinking (that's true even when I've gone to sleep using the power button). No matter how the computer goes to sleep (power light blinking), I can no longer wake it by moving the mouse, I have to click the mouse or hit a key.

When the computer wakes without ejecting the drive, the TM Preferences say: "Making backup disk available...", then "Calculating changes...", then it does the backup - but it doesn't always do the backup immediately, it sometimes waits until the next scheduled time.

When the computer wakes and the TM disk is ejected, the TM Preferences say: "Next backup when disk is connected...", it connects the disk - it shows in my case, blue, on the desktop, then "Calculating changes..", does the backup - I'm not sure that it does the backup every time when the TM disk remounts - that's the next thing I have to watch for - I didn't catch that in my notes.

K T

Level 7

23,877 points

Sep 18, 2009 11:45 AM in response to Glen Carpenter

Logged in to report my external volume just ejected it self again.

How many USB devices do you have on the bus(s)?

judithnewman Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 18, 2009 12:46 PM in response to K T

K T wrote:

Logged in to report my external volume just ejected it self again.

How many USB devices do you have on the bus(s)?

Just the one.

I've been capturing bits from the system log to see if I can see any patterns (7 pages worth) - unfortunately, while I can see that things are happening, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
I've got several scenarios:
wake, no eject, no backup
wake, no eject, backup
wake, eject, remount, no backup
wake, eject, remount, backup
But I have no idea why the last two are happening - what else is going on that causes the ejecting.

judithnewman Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 18, 2009 12:50 PM in response to judithnewman

judithnewman wrote:

K T wrote:

Logged in to report my external volume just ejected it self again.

How many USB devices do you have on the bus(s)?

I should have said I have
the keyboard (USB1)
the hub (USB2) (self powered)
the LaCie Hard Drive USB (self powered)
On the hub I have the printer and scanner

judithnewman Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 18, 2009 12:51 PM in response to judithnewman

judithnewman wrote:

judithnewman wrote:

K T wrote:

Logged in to report my external volume just ejected it self again.

How many USB devices do you have on the bus(s)?

I should have said I have
the keyboard (USB1)
the hub (USB2) (self powered)
the LaCie Hard Drive USB (self powered) (USB3)
On the hub I have the printer and scanner

Sep 22, 2009 8:55 AM in response to K T

Keyboard + Mouse and an EyeTV.
External HDD is FW 800 and it has its own PS.
External HDD is on a UPS, as is the computer.

Sep 29, 2009 9:27 AM in response to judithnewman

I have a similar problem. I have an external USB HD that is used only for TM. I began using this (new) drive after I upgraded to SL 10.6.1. Whenever my MacBook wakes from sleep, it displays the "disk was not ejected properly" warning. This is true whether I manually put it to sleep or it is put to sleep by the timer. The Energy Saver "Put hard disk(s) to sleep" setting does not affect this behavior. Apparently sleep mode effectively severs the connection between the computer and the HD, exactly as if I pulled out the USB plug. When it wakes, it is as if the USB plug has been reinserted and the HD begins to work again, albeit with the improper ejection warning. Thus far, my TM backups do not seem to be corrupted by this, and the warning is just a nuisance. Nevertheless, I suspect that having my HD improperly ejected several times each day will eventually cause a real problem. Any suggestions?

Sep 29, 2009 9:30 AM in response to judithnewman

I should have added that my HD has an external power supply.

judithnewman Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 29, 2009 1:02 PM in response to Ross Meador

Ross Meador wrote:
I have a similar problem. I have an external USB HD that is used only for TM. I began using this (new) drive after I upgraded to SL 10.6.1. Whenever my MacBook wakes from sleep, it displays the "disk was not ejected properly" warning. This is true whether I manually put it to sleep or it is put to sleep by the timer. The Energy Saver "Put hard disk(s) to sleep" setting does not affect this behavior. Apparently sleep mode effectively severs the connection between the computer and the HD, exactly as if I pulled out the USB plug. When it wakes, it is as if the USB plug has been reinserted and the HD begins to work again, albeit with the improper ejection warning. Thus far, my TM backups do not seem to be corrupted by this, and the warning is just a nuisance. Nevertheless, I suspect that having my HD improperly ejected several times each day will eventually cause a real problem. Any suggestions?

I just had a message from Apple that the engineers have responded. I've returned the call but my contact person wasn't available.
I'll fill you in after I've talked to Apple.
I've left the computer in "never sleep" mode since my last call to Apple about a week ago - no ejecting. I'd suggest you do the same thing until I can share what Apple has to say.
Judith

Oct 7, 2009 5:06 PM in response to Glen Carpenter

I'm having this issue as well. It's concerning to me because I cannot complete a time machine backup. Is there any fix??

jacjan

Level 1

0 points

Oct 12, 2009 4:18 AM in response to Tim Theobald

I have this exact same issue myself.

Now SL wont even try to mount it.
Had to connect it to a linux computer, remove and create new partition, format it to fat32.
Then it worked on both win7 & ubuntu, but not in OSX.
Removed the partition in win7, connected it to SL, initialized it, and it worked.
For 5 minutes, now it wont connect again...

kjw97

Level 1

20 points

Oct 17, 2009 6:57 AM in response to judithnewman

I know this is unlikely to be the same problem, but just in case it helps anyone ... I was having this exact same issue (the self-ejecting USB drive, with the same error messages as the original poster) recently with a brand new WD Passport drive that I was trying to use with Time Machine. After much frustration, I tried swapping the cable with one that I had from a different USB drive and have had NO problems since. It's been nearly three days now with no issues, when before I was getting the problem every 5 or 10 minutes. So it looks like it's a dud cable.

So might be worth swapping cables if possible, just as a test. You never know your luck!

Disk Drive ejecting itself