Disk Drive ejecting itself

Nevermind. After playing around with it some more while attached to my MB intel, it was having the same problem as before. I contacted simpleTech and they agreed that it was probably the hard drive, likely the internal controllers. They recommended that I try replacing the housing, so I am going to try that.

Just wanted to let you know that my problem is probably not related to all of yours' and that you shouldn't consider it when diagnosing.

I am having this problem too. Both of my external drives (WD My Book Home Editions, 1TB & 1.5TB) are connected via eSATA to a Highpoint RocketRAID eSATA for Mac PCI-e card.

The 1.5TB drive is brand new, but I have had the 1TB drive for almost a year, and it always worked fine on my iMac with 10.5x.

At first they were randomly ejecting quite a bit, most usually when waking from sleep. I updated the firmware on them and they seem to randomly eject less, but it still DOES happen, and it's scaring me as I have lots of important data on them.

Having this problem with a 1tb Lacie as well. This is definitely an SL issue.. Had 10.5.8 previously. Just got the new 27inch iMac and now it keeps ejecting after 20 min. The lacie cable is much better than another cable i tried, but still not good enough. Please fix Apple.

Interesting update: My drive is working perfectly on my MacBook with Snow leopard 10.6.2 but is ejecting immediately on the iMac.

I am having the same issue described here. I'm on 10.6.2, and I have a seagate 1 TB hard drive in a NexStar3 enclosure. After thinking the problem was the drive, I had it RMA'd. I just finished putting the new drive in the enclosure, and the problem is not solved.

Are there any other ideas? Here's what I've tried:

1. Toggling on the option to sleep the disks
2. Toggling sleep disks off
3. Using USB instead of Firewire 800
4. Sata to USB device
5. Different enclosure on my computer.
6. My enclosure on a different mac
7. My drive in a different enclosure on a different mac.
8. Firewire 400

Any other ideas? This is frustrating, I'd really like to get a back up of my data, but can't get this drive to read for more than a few minutes. I have found that after it's ejected, I have to leave the drive off or unplugged from my system for a few minutes before it will recognize it again.

Rupert09 wrote:
Interesting update: My drive is working perfectly on my MacBook with Snow leopard 10.6.2 but is ejecting immediately on the iMac.

Do you also have an external iSight camera attached to your iMac? I've found that an external iSight can interfere with external FW disk drives.

I have a wrinkle to add to this. I am experiencing this same problem with an internal SATA hard drive. I never experienced this problem before 10.6.2 to my knowledge. I discovered this problem when my iTunes library had grown large enough that I wanted it off my primary drive. So I moved my iTunes library to my secondary hard drive. Now I'm having iTunes regularly die right in the middle of downloading songs from the App Store, or playing songs. Note, this was the Apple-installed factory hard drive in a Mac Pro that was in the box when the machine was bought. The case has never been opened, or fiddled with.

Has anyone gotten any confirmation about the reason for intermittent drive ejections? I'd like to know...this renders have the internal storage in my computer unreliable...(1TB).

I am having the same problem myself on my iMac I had never experienced the issue before on previous versions of OS X or with any of my other external desktop hard drives (which are a LaCie and G-Technology brand drives). For almost the last decade I've stored my iTunes library on an external drive with no problems. I recently needed to upgrade the size of my hard drive and purchased a Seagate Free Agent (Triple Interface) last night during use of my iMac the drive dismounted itself and gave the incorrectly disconnected drive error. I have since tried to connect the drive to my machine using both firewire and usb and the drive only seems to power on but not recognize. I have power cycled the drive and restarted my machine. Checked to in both disk utility and in profiler ALL of my other external drives connect to that machine perfectly fine. I do not believe the drive itself is bad because I have since connected it to other systems in my household running 10.6.2.

Also cruising NewEgg.com I saw that another OS X user had the same problem with the same model drive as mine but has since gotten his to recognize on his original machine.

Here's an update to my status. I spent 3 days on the phone with AppleCare support, and then after with my local Apple Store whom I had to deliver the Mac Pro to. The upshot of the diagnosis was this:

a) I could reproduce the problem consistently on both my primary hard drive, and my secondary hard drive. Both drives were the ones installed in my Mac Pro at the time of purchase by Apple.

b) The problem continued after erasing the drives and reinstalling OS X (Snow Leopard).

c) Both drives showed no errors when disks where verified / repaired using Disk Utility.

d) Extended hardware diagnostics (from the Mac Pro's install disk which came with the computer) showed no problems at all.

e) The Apple Store found errors on both disks when doing a surface scan of each. A surface scan apparently can uncover problems that Disk Utility cannot.

f) The Apple Store apparently had success when using smaller hard drives (mine were 1TB) in my machine.

I am presently awaiting 2 new 1TB hard drives from AppleCare. I have some level of confidence in the fact that at least errors were found on both drives; however, I am still considering the rather low probability of having both drives fail roughly following upgrade to Snow Leopard and the problem really only manifesting itself with a specific action in iTunes. I was able to read and write 500GB back and forth on these drives with no problem from the Finder. Only in iTunes did this stuff fail. From a technical career in software development, that seems like a hyper-coincidental aligning of the planets to me. Even the AppleCare rep initially doubted we were dealing only with hard drive problems.

I'll be thrilled if the new drives fix the problem, but forensics would suggest there's more at work here than just hard drives. We'll see.

Update to everyone in this thread: the 2 new 1TB hard drives I received from AppleCare also failed identically to the 2 original drives I had. The common thread -- they are all Hitachi drives.

Now I had happened to buy 2 new Western Digital Caviar drives, which arrived at the same time, and I installed OS X on those and tested those. Here's the upshot: the Western Digital drives worked perfectly, and I had no problems with either of those drives, in any of the 4 drive bays in my Mac Pro. However, the Hitachi drives from Apple all failed in all 4 of the drive bays.

AppleCare has determined the difference between the Western Digital and Hitachi drive specs to be the amperage required -- the Western Digital's are energy efficient, and run on lower amperage, while the HItachi's are not, and run on higher amperage. The working theory at the present is this: we've ruled out drive bays or the main board as problems, and given the power difference, the theory is that this has to do with a power supply issue. This has relevance to both internal and external hard drives, as externals that might pull power from the main box might be suffering from lack of power from a weak or dying power supply.

If anyone is having the problem with internal hard drives, particularly Hitachi's from Apple, AppleCare asked me to ask you to post your serial number to your Mac so that they can tie another case to this issue. They said that would really help solve the problem. If you'd rather do this offline, you can contact me at brado77@me.com.

Thanks...

Similar problem, external hard drive ejecting itself automatically and randomly. I have 500GB Simpletech connected via USB.

This has to be without doubt the most frustrating problem ever!! My external HHD (320gb Iomega drive I bought from the Apple store!) drive works fine with my PS3, any XP or Vista machines it goes near. As Im typing this it just happened again!! Arrrrrrgggghhhh!!!
Please someone find a magic solution!! Or APPLE FIX THE OS!!

I have the same message "the disk was not ejected properly. If possible, always eject a disk before unplugging it or turning it off" when I connect my USB 2.0 camera card reader into my brand new MacBook that is running 10.6.2. This never happened on my iMac with Leopard, but now happens continually when I'm trying to import my photos. After three tries or so, my photos will import, but I'd rather not have the error message every time! Any thoughts?

About the only thing that has seemed to keep the issue at bay so to speak is to restart the computer from time to time. I seem to experience the problem more when the computer is on for days and goes to and from sleep mode with the external disk connected. For me, its not really as big a problem, I tend to connect and re-connect my external disk to gain access to files on a semi-regular basis. Thats about all I have found to resolve the problem, certainly no real fix by any means.

Same problem here, usb enclosure containing my macbook's original 160gb HD as TM, everything worked fine until 10.6 upgrade. 60% of the times i wake the computer up opening the lid and find the improper disconnection alert. Nonetheless the drive appears connected, only not recognized as a TM drive.
Power saving/cable didn't influence at all. I have the feeling that the improper disconnection happens during the sleep time, maybe in the quite long gap between closing the lid and the beginning of the regular sleep (when the power light starts cycling). Anyway, much before the wakening occurs.

Which is BTW strange, since the usb ports seem to be able to charge an iPhone during sleep anyway.