Q: Disk Drive ejecting itself

I don't know if my first post was clear enough, but in your case it should be the 250gb Hitachi internal drive you should run the repair disk and the repair disk permissions on. Also remember doing it after booting from the Snow leopard install dvd. Did you do that?

But apart from that: after my external drives started working again, one of them (also with 3 partitions) started not to mount one of the disks. I tried to run a repair disk on this harddrive also, but at first disk utilities said it couldn't be repaired. Then I tried repair all 3 partitions individually and in the end I ran a repair on the whole thing, and it worked.

I don't know if it can harm your drives running these commands, but at least it worked for me. It's a tip I got from a friend of mine that used to work for Apple both repairing mac computers and and also in the support department.
Now I'm on my second day with my harddisks running perfectly. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Hope this helps

Looks like I have to search for another solution. Either OS X screw up or the problem within the external HDD. I've tried with my friend NTFS formatted HDD, it read fine. But my own HDD still messed up.

Then I tried using repair disk as suggestion. But this result made more and more confused.
First I verify. Of course this is the result.
http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/5840/img2022v.jpg

Then I try to repair. Disk Utility says it could not unmount the disk but actually I suspect the disk is ejected itself, again. I try to close and re-open disk utility, as I feared… it not detected again.
http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/8022/img2023b.jpg

Trying for the second time, still didn't unmount. This is ridiculous. When one of my partition doesn't mount, the other partition that I want to repair couldn't unmount
http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/4900/img2024b.jpg

I try again, this time I select entire volume, and verify first. Looks like it ejected itself when in the middle of the process
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/4223/img2025l.jpg

So I noted this is either OS X misbehaving or the underlying problem is my HDD.

I also run another test with AJA benchmark for HDD write/read speed. Fortunately the test is done before the disk ejected again. I think I know why it have longer time for detecting and mount. But still one of partition didn't mount. Of course this is definitely not normal. Write/read speed actually could reach ~50 MB/s.
http://img541.imageshack.us/img541/9700/screenshot20110221at054.png

I could access one of my partition but looking back at that write/read speed, right now I don't want to mess anything.
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/9700/screenshot20110221at054.png

What I'm planning for the next solution is using either one of this tool: DiskWarrior, Drive Genius, or TechTool Pro. But with my time schedule probably I will do it Tomorrow.

I've been experiencing this same issue for the past 2 months or so. I just fixed it after reading through this entire thread. I'm not sure exactly which of the following resolved the issue, but this is what I did:

1) Repaired permissions on my iMac's internal HD.
2) Reformatted my external 500GB Western Digital HD
3) Changed spotlight preferences to make my external HD private (not searched)
4) Rebooted

All is well now. Time Machine is backing up and no random disk ejections.

I'm having the same issue, however, it only happens when the computer goes to sleep.

I have a flash drive, not an externel HDD.

And, I see on here that booting from the OS X install DVD and running the Disk Utility repairs may fix the issues. Is it necessary to boot from the DVD, or can I just insert the DVD, and run Disk Utility off the mounted DVD via Snow Leopard?

kyleAlcobas wrote:
booting from the OS X install DVD and running the Disk Utility repairs may fix the issues. Is it necessary to boot from the DVD, or can I just insert the DVD, and run Disk Utility off the mounted DVD via Snow Leopard?

Welcome to Apple's discussion groups.

The DVD isn't needed. You can use Disk Utility from your boot volume's Utilities folder to repair any drive/volume except for the boot volume.

Folks,

I just got off the phone with "my" Apple Senior Advisor (SA) and all that the engineers have been able to come up with by way of suggestions for me are:

1. Try a different Firewire cable (tried that weeks ago, didn't solve the problem);
2. Get the G-Drive its own power source (will try that but have to order one first);
3. Get the latest firmware update for the G-Drive from Hitachi (will try that);
4. Create a new partition on my Mac HD and try to replicate the problem there (will try that).

Pretty thin gruel, I know, but anyway, I'll give 2, 3 and 4 above a whirl and report back to y'all.

I asked the SA if the engineers she spoke with had read this discussion, and she said she had told them about it but didn't know if they had actually read it. I urged her to urge them to do so because it seems to me that they could pick up a lot of really helpful information about the problem.

On her part, she asked me to suggest to everyone who has posted here to get in touch with Apple support so that the techies can get some firsthand information from everyone directly. I assume that many of you have already done that, but the more the merrier, as they say.

Chris

Message was edited by: onemac

Message was edited by: onemac

Just my 2 cents worth: I have a 27" iMac i7 and a two year old MacBook Pro. I first experienced a USB disappearing during backups of the iMac. I had one Firewire drive and one USB drive (no Firewire on that drive). After upgrade from 10.6.4 or 10.6.5 - I forget - the USB drive that never had problems, started dismounting. I had it running through a powered hub, so I got rid of the hub but the drive kept dismounting. All this time, the firewire disk worked perfectly, as it always had.

I finally gave up on the USB drive on the iMac and added a second Firewire drive. Both Firewire drives, on on Time Machine, and one bootable clone, have worked perfectly for a month or so.

Recently, I tried the USB disk on my MacBook Pro. running 10.6.6. The disk works fine - no problems.

I'm convinced that the upgrade of the iMac to 10.6.6 started the problem with ejecting the disk, but I'm puzzled as to why I don't have similar problems with the laptop.

Is there anyone here that already attached the external HDD into another OS? Not OS X but Ubuntu.
Considering several page before we suspected the OS X 10.6.5 and later was the problem... what if I attached the drive into different OS, different machine.

I heard Ubuntu capable reading HFS+. My priority right now is getting my data back and get rid this random eject. But it seem I only able do this after weekend. Maybe one of you want to try this method?
If the drive able to mount and no random eject on Ubuntu that will be good news. Its not HDD problem but Apple have to find a way to fix this.

Before Ubuntu I considering Windows and using this software MacDrive thing for reading HFS+. But it cost some money and I don't want to do that.

Encountered this same problem and found this thread. The "verify and repair" in disk utility suggested in this thread does, sometimes, temporarily fix the problem. However, I believe I have a longer term fix for it.

First off, I'm experiencing the problem only with a 2nd gen Drobo (with 3 Western Digital 2tb HD's in it) attached to a mid-2009 Mac mini running 10.6.6. Basically, I start with a factory fresh Drobo behaving normally and attempt to dump the data from two USB drives (1tb & 1.5tb Western digital "Elements") into it. At some point in the process (takes estimated 12-18 hours for transfer) the Drobo will self eject and then I won't be able to remount it for any sustained period unless I'm able to repair the drive in disk utility or I reformat it. I've repeated this process several times attempting to transfer the data from the two external drives into the Drobo.

I called Drobo technical support and was told the following:

1. Apple is aware of the issue. It has existed since 10.6.5. They thought it would be fixed in 10.6.6 but it was not.
2. It primarily occurs with large volume drives (>2tb) attached via USB. The tech explained that these larger volumes require greater power to the USB port, but the last couple OSx builds have had some kind of bug that doesn't supply power as required. Data is corrupted during large transfers and eventually the drive partition is sufficiently corrupted that it ejects itself. I'm sure the issue is far more complicated than this, but I'm not an IT guy.

I reformatted the Drobo and connected using FIREWIRE rather than USB and the problem does not seem to occur. The Drobo tech said that this issue will not occur when attached via Firewire. Maybe someone has a situation that would suggest this fix isn't for everyone, but it fixed the problem for me.

Seriously though, apple needs to fix this issue.

MSeneca,

You said that "I reformatted the Drobo and connected using FIREWIRE rather than USB and the problem does not seem to occur. The Drobo tech said that this issue will not occur when attached via Firewire."

That's very interesting because with my 500Gb G-Drive Mini I've had the problem with Firewire and decided just a few days ago to switch to USB (the G-Drive Mini does both) and thus far have only had what I would call temporary ejections, i.e. I get the "did not eject properly" warning but in fact the disk has not actually ejected. This doesn't necessarily mean that the problem has gone away, and my test of the USB connection will continue, but thus far I have certainly had less trouble using USB.

It's an intriguing theory of the Drobo techs that there's a bug in 10.6.5 and 6.6 that doesn't always supply power as required to the USB port (and I assume the Firewire port as well). That would be a tidy explanation for why my G-Drive works normally most of the time but then seemingly randomly (but probably not randomly at all) ejects itself a couple of times a day or so, and only when I wake my MacBook (but not every time I do so).

I've recorded 27 "All Message" logs on Console and I wonder if there are some great clues in them as to what's going on, but I don't speak Console's language, so it's all Greek to me. I sent a few of the earliest logs to Apple engineers but they didn't seem to get much from them. If someone could tell me if a drop in port power should show up in these logs and what the log language for that looks like, I could take a look through them and see if I can spot anything.

OK, now I'm seriously frustrated. Disk still ejecting it self after various method that I know.

I want to format it, but at least I want get every data in partition that didn't want to mount. But there is two problem that made me afraid.
1. Since disk drive ejecting itself, my read/write speed of external HDD is really painfully slow. Re-formatting in this condition definitely will take a long time.
2. There is no guarantee that disk will not eject in the middle of this process. If I'm screwed, probably the disk will never able to recognized by system.

This second problem actually also happen whenever I try to use Disk Repair function. It progress bar didn't move at all at the partition that needed to repair. Then suddenly the disk ejecting itself. The other partition Disk Repair progress bar seems fine and done in small amount of time, before the disk ejecting itself, AGAIN.

If only I had another friends that had a Mac, I want to try repair first at his Mac.
---
I'm still not trying to read my HDD in Ubuntu though. Was anyone have tried, attaching the HDD into another OS?

My Time Machine and external USB drive has also been ejecting itself. Hope it gets fixed in 10.6.7.

Hi John,

Maybe you want to add your not working drive in this spreadsheet:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ap3m9PBEoiEadGxHWjl1TWg1Y0tVclB1S2RraTB hU2c&hl=nl&authkey=CKPC_okO

Tx,
Jeroen

This thread already reached 49.187 view and 239 replies. It will be funny if Apple still ignores this problem and not fix this on 10.6.7 or maybe we must wait for Lion.

I have a new 2010 min Mac with OS X 10.6.6 and two Seagate GoFlex 3TB drives attached via USB. One drive is USB 2 the other USB 3. The USB 2 Drive runs great and I have had no issues with it at all. The USB 3 drive is a pain! It ejects itself without warning for no reason. This only happens under OS X! I have a Windows 7 computer and the drive has never ejected itself or given in errors while under Windows 7 (I hated to say this!)

It's kind to nice to know that other people are having issues with self ejecting drives as it is driving me insane (slowly). Would love to know why two drives from the same manufacture act differently. I was think it might be the USB 3, so was planning on swapping the drive caddies to put the good drive in the USB caddie. But would I be pushing my luck because I don't want to corrupt the good drive data. The 2nd drive was meant to be a secure backup drive but the rsync never completes before the drives ejects itself.