Disk Drive ejecting itself

Got me an iMac 27 a couple a weeks ago and hooked up my Drobo and a 1Tb WD My Passport hard drive. Use the Drobo to back up my Lightroom library so use the USB 2.0 connections only and it ejects randomly now and then. On the other hand the WD hard drive has never ejected randomly. This was a problem I never had on my old MBP. Seeing that this thread is now 49 pages long, it most def seems as if Apple has a problem to fix!

Many posts have implied that it is a cable issue. This is not the case. the OS is ejecting the drives at random just as though you clicked to remove the drive. The cables have nothing to do with this. I have over a dozen drives of different makes and sizes. The OS will eject any of them at random. Others have experienced the same issue with firewire as well as USB drives. I have tried at least a dozen different cables of all price ranges as well as various hubs and direct connections. Any of the drives will eject at random regardless of where it is connected or what cable it is connected to. This problem began with OS X. I finally gave up after losing data when a drive disconnected while uploading images to it. I dumped the Mac and have gone back to a PC and all of the same drives work with the same cables that I tried to use on the Mac. I spend around a hundered dollars on cables but the issue never was rectified until I went back to a PC.

Apple has left their customers hung out to dry on this as is seen by the amount of posts that have been done in this forum alone. If you search you will find other forums as well. They keep trying to tell everyone that it is a cable issue but if you really search you will find that many have done what I did and tried many cables and different drives, hubs etc. but the problem continues to happen at random. Sometimes it might go a few days or perhaps a week but sooner or later any of my external drives would suddenly be ejected and the OS would say that it had been removed unexpectedly.

I am glad that I gave the Mac paper weight way and went back to a reliable Windows system.

was running PERFECTLY on my 1T Seagate FreeAgent GoGlex until 10.8.3 update. Now it keeps disconnecting randomly even after I have disabled the auto hardisk power saving feature.

obviously an OS issue.

49 posts and still no solution! I agree that it's an OS issue. C'mon Apple, give us a solution, please!!!

One thing I've just experienced is that USB3 drives seem to work ok; I now have 2 and have not had any disconnects when only they are connected. However as soon as anything USB2 gets plugged in disconnects start again, affecting both USB2 and 3 devices.

I agree... I have a WD 1TB USB 3.0 drive that I am using as my time machine backup, and it has not self-ejected.

page 49 - 726 replies -a quarter million views - an 18 month old apple drive with apple firmware - a Gen 5 apple airport with apple software - a 18 month old apple computer with apple software - all the latest apple patches - and still drive disconnect and do not remount when you need them. And now someone thinks USB3 is going to help! Ha ha ha!

But I'll tell you a little secret. The same stupid stuff happens with WIndows 2008 Server R2, WIndows 7 (never mind Win 8). Drives disconnect at random and do not remount. Most likely the thing in common here is the drive firmware, much of which has its own energy saving junk (the bane of every computer users existence) that there is no getting away from when using external ports.

A good NAS is the the way to go, since there is no USB/Firewire/Thunderbolt port involved, only ethernet, which the energy saving dips in the world seem to be leaving alone. Taiwan's QNAP supports SMB 2 (Lion required) and AFP, though no UL ratings on their stuff. A lot of NetGear's stuff is old school SMB1 (Snow Leopard or older or Win XP) and also AFP. Also note all that stuff runs on Linux (stripped down Debian or Ubuntu) - maybe that should give everyone a clue.

I'm not saying USB3 is the answer, merely reporting that when I ONLY have the two USB3 devices I own connected I do not get disconnects. Of course, as soon as I mix and match 2 & 3, which in practice is precisely what I actually need to do then it falls over.

This issue is at the ridiculous stage and has been for quite a while now, of course NAS is a solution in some circumstances, but not for the majority of users.

Back in Snow Leopard I finally found a 3TB Seagate drive which never ejects, from Snow Leopard all the way through Mountain Lion. I have left it running for countless hundreds of hours while Time Machine does whatever it does that takes it so long half the time, and not a single eject, except once when I knocked the drive over.

Trouble is, I have two large drives that need backup and I want to do them separately, so I bought another 3TB Seagate recently - not precisely the same model. It ejects every time after about 5 minutes, no matter what I do, but only when running backups. It is fine just sitting there waiting for me to write to, and using it like an every day drive. It seems that the sustained use causes the eject after 5 - 10 minutes of writing to it.

I haven't kept up with this thread, but I get the feeling Basman may be onto something, indelicate as his comment might be 🙂

What does all this mean in layman's lingo?

Basman was on his high horse and oblique but I gather that we should avoid using external ports. And we should use ethernet?

To be honest, I'm not sure Basman was onto anything realistic about ethernet, but I think he was onto the fact that other than by dint of blind luck and voodoo, this problem is not going away. Watching this thread since its inception in 2009 pretty much cinches that in my mind.

Like putting our money in banks, I suppose we'll have to settle for cloud storage and all that comes with it, but in my case, I'll have to live long enough for several TB's of storage to become affordable. I'm open to other suggestions, but these disk drives are enough to make your head explode.

That's 49 pages of posts, 212,771 views, over almost four years (September 2010), on four operating system releases. iBS if you ask me.

Re "I'll have to live long enough for several TB's of storage to become affordable"

No offense, but if you can afford to buy a Mac, I think you can afford a TB external HD... They are only about $90 - even less if you shop around. Even a poor man's NAS - WD's 2TB MyBook Live is only $150 - and it works very well indeed.

I can confirm this for as long as there is not even a USB2 Hub with wireless mouse or kboard receivers connected.

I work in video with 30 different 1 to 3 TB disks, all most all full of data. Mostly WD drives in external USB3 docks like IcyBox or NexStar. They get ejected randomly as soon as any other USB2 stuff gets connected.

Only one exception: On my MBP Retina and also on the iMac the (new) LaCie Rugged 1TB drive with Thunderbolt and USB3 runs well. It never was ejected so far.

However unfortunately this form of diskspace is quiet expensive.

Basman

After doing some googling, I am convinced NAS indeed is a far superior option. Even without the disk ejecting problem , it is still more attractive to switch to NAS.

Thanks again for the advice