Disk Drive ejecting itself

My solution:

Place a .dmg file into the self ejecting HDD

Any installation .dmg file will be ok, (I use Audacity install)

• Mount the .dmg file installation, and open it
• Usually, in any .dmg image, there is a .txt file: open it

as long as your .txt file from the mounted .dmg image is open, the HDD cannot be ejected

It is a kind of ghetto solution, but it works!

lol This actually works? I'll have to try it. I would love that. I've just given up on backing up my second laptop disk, and I'm too lazy to get a network drive, but this I'll try.

This is not going to work. The drives in my case are ejected, whatever file or program or diskimage is open. That's exactly the problem: after ejecting repetedly open files or images get corrupted.

However I get good results with the LaCie rugged drive 1 TB Thunderbolt. Not very inexpensive but hasn't ejected since the 3 month I'm using it.

Let's hope apple improves.

Until then make sure to have enough backups of your precious data and always expect the worst scenerio.

Best...

Ironic how this affects Time Machine, or is caused by Time Machine which is supposed to prevent data loss!!!

bjl

The .dmg method works for my macbook.

I'm sorry to listen that this method cannot help you. This means that the ejecting problems comes from complex causes and there's no quickfix for that.

I could say that this is a serious bug for OSX and cannot understand why apple does not solve this problem

Dumb question, but has anyone reported this issue to Apple? And if so, what was the response?

I've read somewhere that some Apple tech on the phone said to someone reporting that issue "this doen't happen with Apple external drives".

There are currently no new Apple branded external hard drives available. See

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/mac_accessories/storage

The only thing is the Time Capsule, which acts as its own base station, so it is more of a a standalone product and acts like a NAS, which brings us back to my earlier post. Not cheap either. So a cynical take on it is that maybe that is why Apple is not so interested in fixing this issue - LOL. Or perhaps they just haven't been able to do it, given the variability of hard drive firmware, enclosure interface modules, and the intermittent nature of the problem. Like I posted before - this is not just an Apple problem. I suspect the root cause is that many drives have their own built-in spin-down functionality - this is a part of their firmware and it is why many of them have the so-called "green" label. There is nothing you can do to your host machine to defeat that if the box the drive is in cannot wake up the drive when the host computer or appliance attempts to access it. Various external USB drives hooked up to my Airport (gen 5) still dismount regularly and stay that way, even when using an Apple branded bare drive mechanism (it's actually a Hitachi) taken out of a Mac. The only thing for it is to unplug the USB connector and then plug it back in. Firewire 800 drive assemblies (hard drive and inteface) mounted directly to the Mini have been way more reliable (for me anyway). I have good luck with one of the older multiport NewerTechnology drive caddies, even using a WD 1 TB green drive. You shove the loose SATA drive (either 3.5" or 2.5") into the top like a piece of bread into a toaster.

Re: "The only thing for it is to unplug the USB connector and then plug it back in."

Well, no... The problem I have had is the drive ejects itself (presumably) in the middle of a write operation, and renders the drive useless. So useless, it is completely unusable.. ie, I can't even mount the drive any more on either a Mac or PC to reformat it. After toasting several hard drives, I am somewhat reluctant to try any more.

(BTW, I still have these dead drives, so if anyone knows how I can recover them, I would be very thankful!)

If the drive disconnects during a write operation, then most likely you have a problem with the enclosure's interface module, given the fact (apparently) that you "toasted" several drives with it. That is a little different than a drive dismounting while idle, which is what the majority of the posts in this thread (including mine) seem to be talking about. In many cases where the drive dismounts while it is not idle, the drive mechanisms themselves are OK, but their directory structure gets corrupted due to the disconnect. This has long been an issue with FireWire drives, for example, when an owner either disconnects it without first dismounting or simply removes power. This also happened with an old MyBook enclosure I had, due to the failure of the enclosure's temperature monitoring feature, which lead to disconnects in the middle of write operations. The WD Blue drive mechanism in it, however, was still good. Most of the work was extracting it from the stupid WD proprietary enclosure, which is built to keep meddlesome customers out. I strongly suggest you try a different enclosure (the NewerTech Voyager one costs $40) or one of those Swiss Army Knife interface gizmos (maybe even cheaper - I paid $20 for a no-name one) and see if you can use the Apple Disk Utility or a third party application (e.g. Drive Genius, etc.) to be able to do something with your drives. Disk Utility may still detect the drive, even if corruption prevents it from being mounted. Likewise with the Windows Storage Manager, which you will find if you right click on "My Computer" and select "Manage." You may be able to run a repair to recover the data or, if that fails, it may allow you to reformat your drives so they become useful again.

Just an update from me (I posted waaaaaayyy back when).

NAS is all well and good, but it does nothing for those of us looking (needing!) a mobile solution.

For me, the disk only ejects when I try to write to it, though initial mounting of the drive is problematic...

• Once I connect the drive, it is at least a solid 60 seconds to sometimes two minutes before the drive appears in finder.
• When it is in finder, I click on the drive to populate the list of folders/files on the top level. This takes (and I am not exagerating) at best two minutes, but I have had times when it has stretched out to well beyond five minutes.
• The first time I click on any folder on the drive (after mounting and populating the list) it takes from 10 seconds to close to 30 seconds to show the contents of the folder. Going back to a folder I have previously opened isnt a problem, it generally opens immediatley... Im sure there is some logic to that.

As long as I dont attmept to write to the drive it will not eject.

Note: Ive tried all of the tricks everyone has listed previously and it has not helped. Its really a sad situation.

2 and half years ago I had a problem with a self-ejecting Samsung S2. After reading this discussion I created and shared a list with "self ejecting drives": https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ap3m9PBEoiEadGxHWjl1TWg1Y0tVclB1S2R raTBhU2c&authkey=CKPC_okO&authkey=CKPC_okO#gid=0

Thanks for the input so far, everyone!

Yesterday, I benefited from it myself, since I needed a new drive and I knew which one *not* to buy 🙂.

I know this is not a solution at all, especially for the guys that already have a bad HDD. It's only a workaround for a sad situation (4 years, 233040 views and counting...).

A little searching shows that mobile NAS devices can be had - e.g. Corsair Voyager Air 1 TB with 7 hr battery and its own router built in. Seagate Goflex Satellite is another. Airstash has a line of flash drive units and adapters that can connect wirelessly and can get power from an available USB port. These products are driven by storage requirements for ipads and other devices, whose manufacturers insist on keeping their customers from upgrading their unit's flash storage capacity at a reasonable price. These devices may also benefit Mac owners tired of Apple's (and others') inability to solve the USB drive sleep problem. The working drive list supplied by Jarown is interesting and particularly notable for one thing - the list of pre-canned working drives is really short! I know wireless n does not hold a candle to USB3 or Thunderbolt in terms of speed, but could it be we see a time when the USB port is good for only one thing: 5V power!?

Since I started using the USB hub, the drive had ejected once. It is a possible work-around.

bjl

I am now on my third WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo 4T hard drive. All have had the self-eject issue. WD is refunding my money. Apple claims that there is nothing wrong on their end.

Very frustrating.

Gene