Disk Drive ejecting itself

I just bought a Seagate Expansion 1,5TB drive. It also ejects by itself every once in a while. Can't think of any other reason than OS. So I'm with you guys.

My OWC Mercury Elite Pro 500gb (eSATA) doing the same thing for months (and sometimes my old Maxtor One Touch 4 750gb firewire).

"disk was not ejected properly" all the time. Not using Time Machine, just random disappearances.
OWC replaced the drive 🙂 problem still exists 😟

I've reformatted, repartitioned, repaired permissions, switched cables, reinstalled combo updates...
The only thing I haven't done is downgrade OS versions, and I have a 10.6.3 disk so can't try .2 or .1 (correct?)

I didn't see any mentions of this bug in "reviews". I'm very frustrated at this point and ready to write about it here.. (is this a good idea?)
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MACOS_XSNGL

Just getting the data transfered before replacing/reformatting took days (after weeks of failed attempts), folder by folder at some points. I'm now stalled trying to fix this.

Just adding my 2 cents. Throw'em on the pile 😟

I did the "Apple Partition Map" trick. Not preferred (now I'm scurred).
It started to work.. then it didn't.

Is yours still fixed?

I'm seeing similar behavior. I've got a FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 2 TB plugged in to a brand new unibody MacMini via USB. And it's ejecting on me, but it does remount and seems fine.

I found a utility online that's supposed to disable sleep on the drive and so I did that. We'll see if that helps.

One thing of note, I have an OWC Guardian Maximus RAID 1 enclosure connected to this box via Firewire 800 and it does NOT have the same problem.

Yep, count me in on this issue. I have a 1TB external Lacie that is suddenly ejecting itself all the time. Maddening.

UPDATE (still not fixed):
I bought a 10.6.1 disk at Best Buy (trying the "roll back" idea), combo-upgraded to 10.6.2.. problem still exists. Installed Leopard on a (working at the time) Maxtor firewire drive, booting Leopard there, problem still exists. I repaired permissions during the Leopard firewire boot, problem still exists (and one permission didn't get fixed, some issue I read about, deals with remote access, and apple says isn't cause for concern........lol. I'm actually not worried about that, I've never used remote access).

Yesterday I was by the apple store so I stopped in, asked a Genius if I should make an appointment for the "ejected improperly" issue. He thinks it's the logic board (which I recently had replaced by them due to my screen not waking up at all). I'm still under coverage, but the thought of bad logic board replaced by another bad logic board makes me worried about the make of this product altogether.

Btw, when I got my "fixed" MBP back, my power cord suddenly didn't work.. it powered the laptop, but the red/green LED was off and wasn't charging the battery. I went back to the apple store, their power supply worked, they replaced mine with one that worked.. but what's up with that?? (I have read others are having this issue too).

MY CURRENT STATE:
OWC has offered to replace my "ejecting" MEPClassic('s inside parts).. (again).. but now my old 750gb Maxtor is doing the same thing with firewire connection (the Maxtor usb is working at the moment, but there have been times usb didn't work on the OWC). I can't even get my OWC to show up on the desktop now, for the most part.

I'm going to search for more discussions about logic board issues, and take my MBP to a Genius appointment tomorrow. Last visit, a Genius admitted they had alot of MBP's coming in with screen-won't-wake-up stories and logic boards getting replaced. Is it possible this logic board model is a lemon in general?

JK, any updates on your sleep-utility attempt?

I just had this issue and the solution that worked for me was to try a different USB cable! I remember having this issue a year ago and could not recall what the solution was. Try a new/different cable, hope this helps!

I have been suffering the same problem for some time now and I am convinced after much testing, that the self-ejecting issue is connected to low memory and or Webkit Plugin host, or to be more precise, Flash.

I have several disks attached, and they all eject bar the one connected via FireWire. They all use external power sources and this only happens when I am running low on RAM and/or the processor is having a hard time. Without fail, the disks will self-eject when I'm watching Youtube and doing something else like working in Photoshop. But this will not happen if I watch Youtube in HTML5 and use Photoshop.

The problem is the same when using Google Maps or any other Flash intensive web application for 20 minutes or more.

I can't conclude that Flash or Webkit Plug-in Host is to blame entirely, as I have had the same thing happen when simply exporting a movie from iMovie and not doing anything else at the same time. This leads me to believe it's a memory/processor related issue. How they are connected is beyond me.

As soon as I stop doing anything in Youtube or Google Maps, the problem goes away immediately - the disks no longer self-eject.

I urge you all to try similar tests to see if we can't nail this down to either a memory, processor or plugin issue.

I'm having the same problem, Seagate 2TB external, running on an iMac 2.16 Intel.

It self ejected from my Ethernet hub and then I plugged it directly into the back of the computer and, it's still doing it, only less so...for the moment.

It's a blank disk, which I plan on putting QT movies onto it, but so far, it's just sitting on my desktop, empty (perhaps jealous and playing peek-a-boo so that I pay attention to it? I don't know.)

Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

Any ideas?

I don't think this is a Snow Leopard thing.

I just migrated from a MBP15" (2008) to a brand new MBP17", both running 10.6.4.

I have several daisy chained FW800 drives that I've been using for years without fail.

As soon as I plugged them into the MBP17", I began to experience the random drive ejection failures described here.

I've sadly had to swap all my externals over to USB, losing transfer speeds and efficiency - but it works and none of the drives drop.

Has there been any word from anyone at Apple about this?

Hi - after reading all your comments this is obviously a common problem. I have no idea why but I have bought a new Seegate 2TB external hard drive to use as my Time machine back up. After trying to complete my first back up it just keeps ejecting so can't complete.
Any ideas???? HELP - THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING and I really need to get a back up sorted.

I am having the same problem, ejecting G Drive attached with Firewire.

I did not have this problem until I bought new MacBookPro 17. I contacted G Tech who said drive was failing.

I bought a new G drive. Same problem!

Clearly this is a problem with the new MacBook, maybe the Firewire port? I did not have problem on older MacBook Pro 15 which was running the same OS, same drive same cable.

Apple really doesn't pay attention to problems discussed on this forum. It's user to user.

Use Apple's feedback system.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

I had an older Buffalo drive which is 1TB which works fine on the same computer through same port. Just seems to be the new 2TB one.
So annoying.

Like others, I have rec'd the "disk was not ejected properly" message. My Fantom Green Drive then disappears...in fact, as I was writing this post, a message popped-up that Time Machine wasn't able to perform a back-up. I'll probably find that the drive appears to have had all data wiped clean. Previously, I've run the Disk Utility repair and all the data reappears...and then it all happens again.

As this glitch occurs to others with drives from many manufacturers, one would think that Apple has a fundamental Time Machine problem on their hands.

Apple, fix this problem!