You are correct in part. However, PC drive ejection IS a problem also. As long as USB and Firewire drives continue to work so haphazardly, it is better to concentrate on the Wireless or ethernet network attached storage solutions. This works well with third party NAS boxes, although trying this with an Airport and ist's USB drive is also pathetic. The NAS solution is going mobile and more choices are available all the time.
Your listing idea seems reasonable at first glance and it has in fact been tried by at least one previous poster. But I submit there are to many other variables in the mix to make this an effective method; i.e. what other devices are present, what software is installed, what OS patches are installed, and even what particular month the iMac (or whatever) was built.
Lastly, typical external HD drive assemblies involve several manufacturers. The one who slaps their logo on it may not even be one of them. The drive mechanism inside is just one manufacturer. For example, LaCie does not actuyally make hard drive; they only assemble them into a box of their design. If you open one up you will find someone else's name on the bare drive mechanism inside. In the old days that was Maxtor.
Even if you can open up your proprietsary enclosure (not always so easy) and identify the internal drive mechanism's manufacturer, you are still not out of the woods. For example, a Seagate Barracuda 1 TB (current single platter design) may have a part number and version number that is exactly the same as another drive bought six months later, but despite that they can still be different; e.g. one may have a 32 MB cache and a later one a 64 Mb cache. Sometimes you don't even know a dealer (e.g. Egghead) will send until it is in your hands! The dealers are in the same boat, because they stock with whatever the whoesale distributors have in hand. If Seagate decides to change the cache sizeon their HD controller boards (or whoever supplies those to them does) and there is no change in the part numberm, who is going to be able to tell ahead of time?
The USB-SATA, Firewire-SATA, or Thuderbold-SATA bridge board that is integral to any external hard drive enclosure is another manufacturer involved with their production. These too can vary even with the same brand of enclosure, depending exactly when it was made. For example, Addonics, a Taiwanese manufacturer of HD controllers, enclosures, and interface adapters, has put out several verions of its Zebra box. They all look the same from the outside, but they can differ in subtle ways on the inside. One of several Zebras I have dismounts with regularity from my PC USB port, the others do not; all have the same version of Seagate Barracuda drives - go figure! Even Addonics itself buys most of their chipsets from yet another manufacturer, notably Silicon Image, which you will find in the guts of many drive interfaces provided by many manufacturers. Those chipsets also undergo periodic changes.
Add to that the other uncontrolled variables of flaky cables and connectors. I have had to solder USB ports onto Mac logic boards because of bad or bent contacts; that also caused randon disconnects before the fix. Perhaps dipping them in Holy Water might work on those USB connectors! Not recommended for your Mac logic board, however. ;o)
Try, try the NAS. You will like it, you will see!
