Q: Disk Drive ejecting itself

Oh!  That was you!!  Shoot, sorry!

Ok.  So I have to try and figure out what is different in those Kernel Extension files.  If that is not too hard.

By the way, when I tested my iNeo dock on Windows XP using USB 3 ports (native to my Asus m/b) it worked WITHOUT error or auto eject.

1.4TB successfully copied! Wow. So, excited, but also wonder what changed in those kext files after 10.6.4?

Also replaced IOUSBFamily.kext and IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext with those from 10.6.4, and have transferred almost a terabyte of data from different sources to my DroboPro without a single disconnect.

judithnewman wrote:

 

My Time Machine disk drive has been "ejecting" itself since I installed Snow Leopard. I'm not unplugging it, or turning it off. I'm not touching it.
I'm getting the following error message:
"The disk was not ejected properly. If possible, always eject a disk before unplugging it or turning it off."

My question is why would a disk drive be "ejecting" itself. I've turned off the auto backups, and unselected the drive as the backup disk. It is still "ejecting" itself which leads me to believe the problem isn't with Time Machine but with something else - something connected with Snow Leopard because this wasn't happening five days ago before I installed SL.

Hi, I am one of those who encountered such problems such as my hard disk ejecting itself when I did not even do anything. After 3 weeks of consulting PC service centres, I finally got a suitable solution. Your hard disk will eject by itself is because the memory space is too big. Mine, for instance, is 1TB. Hence, your mac will not have enough power to supply to the hard disk. One solution is to buy a USB hub, with AC adapter. (I bought mine just now for $25.90, but there's even cheaper ones out there.) Remember the AC adapter is very important because it supplies power to the hard disk through the USB hub from the wall. If not, you can choose to buy a Y-cable, which I don't quite recommend. Hope this helps!

Not all of these external drives are USB-powered. Mine, for instance, is a Drobo running four 2TB drives. It's plugged directly into the Mac, and it has its own power supply (not even using a hub). I also have a WD 320Gb drive that IS bus-powered, but it's plugged into an AC-powered USB hub on my desktop - and it has the same problems as the self-powered Drobo.

I think, as evidenced by the folks above who've had success by downgrading the IOUSB*.kext files, that the problem lies in the operating system software, and not in a physical/hardware power issue.

I'd have to agree with Andy and say power supply is not cause for the auto ejecting problem most are experiencing here. Just in my case, I have a USB bus powered WD Passport drive that does not auto eject, but my AC powered drive does.

I have been following this discussion for some time, since I am also experiencing the self ejecting drive problems with my Drobo on Firewire 800 since OS 10.6.7, so I'd like to second U.B.'s statement, that we are not having a USB-only symptom here.  By the way, same problem occurs when connecting the Drobo via USB, only that the drive ejects are even more frequent.

I run into this situation not only while copying huge individual chunks of data, but also when the drive is under heavy load, for example when using the iTunes Library on my Drobo to listen to music or watch a movie while syncing my iPhone / iPad in parallel.

Once this eject has taken place, it repeats over and over as if the drobo were to go into a continuous reboot cycle. I then need to power-down the Drobo for a couple of minutes, before I can start using it again.

My base system is the rather old but so far trustworthy white iMac 24". I am aware of the problem with the parallel usage of FW400 and 800 devices on this machine, so the only FW device I have attached is the Drobo. So no competing devices here.

Hardware Overview:

  Model Name:          iMac

  Model Identifier:          iMac6,1

  Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo

  Processor Speed:          2,16 GHz

  Number Of Processors:          1

  Total Number Of Cores:          2

  L2 Cache:          4 MB

  Memory:          2 GB

  Bus Speed:          667 MHz

  Boot ROM Version:          IM61.0093.B07

  SMC Version (system):          1.10f3

  Serial Number (system):          W8***P

  Hardware UUID:          00000000-0000-1000-8000-0017F2C6F9FF

The Drobo is attached via FW-800 and accommodates 4 x 1GB drives (2 Seagate, 1 Samsung, 1 WD):

FireWire Bus:

  Maximum Speed:          Up to 800 Mb/sec

Rev2:

  Manufacturer:          Drobo

  Model:          0x2

  GUID:          0x1A620200520683

  Maximum Speed:          Up to 800 Mb/sec

  Connection Speed:          Up to 800 Mb/sec

  Sub-units:

Rev2 Unit:

  Unit Software Version:          0x10483

  Unit Spec ID:          0x609E

  Firmware Revision:          0x10200

  Product Revision Level:          2.00

  Sub-units:

Rev2 SBP-LUN:

  Capacity:          17,59 TB (17.592.186.044.416 bytes)

  Removable Media:          Yes

  BSD Name:          disk2

  Partition Map Type:          GPT (GUID Partition Table)

  S.M.A.R.T. status:          Not Supported

  Volumes:

  Capacity:          209,7 MB (209.715.200 bytes)

  Writable:          Yes

  BSD Name:          disk2s1

Drobo:

  Capacity:          17,59 TB (17.591.842.070.528 bytes)

  Available:          16,07 TB (16.074.839.568.384 bytes)

  Writable:          Yes

  File System:          Journaled HFS+

  BSD Name:          disk2s2

  Mount Point:          /Volumes/Drobo

While writing this post, the Drobo has ejected itself again - this time while performing a "disk repair" from the Disk Utility.

Hope this information helps in nailing down the problem that so many of us are experiencing.

<Edited by Host>

@Voje

Your describing a hardware problem.  Either the power supply is failing (low supply voltage will cause that repeated cycling - the drive is rebooting.

Or its over heating.  Over heated electronics will fail (causing the eject), and well designed electronics will try and recover, but overheat and fail again, and again, and again.

If it really has to be left OFF for a few minutes before it works again, I would suspect over heat first.  For a quick test, I use a can of compressed air upside down (so it comes out freezing cold) blown into the air vent as deep as I can get it with the plastic straw.  If that makes it suddenly stop the endless reboot/eject cycle then it was over heated.

I have seen a lot of people ignore the mfr instructions and place their drives on, in, or under things that block cooling and/or get hot.  Are you doing that?

I also routinely add cooling holes to external drive cases - especially if they don't have a fan.  There is no functional reason for the case at all.  Since I switched to drive docks, which leave the drive open-air, I have not had a thermal problem with a drive.  Whereas before, I found my drive enclosures could cook a drive in as little as 6 months in the summer.

I am using an iMac 21 with 16GB RAM and i3. I have (what I just learned) is the problematic LaCie 1TB USB 2.0 External. I bought it on April 6th and started using it only 2 weeks ago. I have 10.6.7. Today I opened Logic Express 9.0 and I changed my audio preferences to use my new Mbox Pro G3 for the interface. That's when the DISK NOT EJECTED PROPERLY message came up. After the drive would dismount itself several times, I cannot read it at all now.

I've notified LaCie but I do think it was strange that it happened while I switched to the new interface.

I'm still waiting for G-Tech people to send me a new hard drive. It should come to me any day. Then, I would need to copy data onto it and to wait a few days to see if the problem reappears on a new one.

Yes it cost me money to ship it, but I would rather if the problem was with the drive and not with the OS.

Otherwise how and if ever Apple would resolve this issue?

Richard, my "self ejecting" drive was positioned in the same manner as other FW drives of mine, but only that one was a problem (again, no matter which fw port/cable combination I would use). It was not blocked by anything to overheat, except that it was maybe doing it to itself. But then in that case the problem would be resolved by new replacement.

Will get back to this thread when I have more news to share.

@Richard, thanks for the fast reply! I tried to narrow down the problem based on your suggestions:

Since I still have enough free capacity, I removed the hard drive I had added last (WD 1TB Caviar Blue). As this drive produces more heat than the others, I have eliminated the possible sources of the overheating as well as reduced the overall power consumption. The Drobo is now back in its original state when I first bought it about 1.5 years ago, in which it had been running flawlessly until I upgraded the OS to 10.6.7.

Drobo immediately started remapping the data across the remaining drives to ensure data redundancy and protection against additional drive failures. During this rebuild time, Drobo still permits data access while working along.

Once again, the drive started ejecting after a couple of hours of operation. The Drobo, however, is still working continuously on redistributing the data.

Btw, the Drobo is standing freely on a sideboard with enough room for ventilation to all sides.

My interpretation of this is, that it is not the Drobo that is causing the problem. If it were a thermal issue, Drobo would shut down, thereby causing the drive eject. Since the Drobo is still doing "it's thing" and also mounts back perfectly after having shut down the mac for a couple of minutes, the disconnect therefore seems to originate from the iMac. If overheating is a problem, then the cause must lie there...

Would you agree, or am I misinterpreting anything here? Appreciate your help!

For what is worth I have been struggling with this random eject problem for weeks on a Iomega external 1Tb.  Iomega said they had PSU problems and sent me a new one, but no better.  I find that if I plug it straight into USB at the back of the computer it works fine, will not work in keyboard USB port.

BlowingBreeze wrote:

 

Your hard disk will eject by itself is because the memory space is too big. Mine, for instance, is 1TB. Hence, your mac will not have enough power to supply to the hard disk.

You either misunderstood what you were told or you were sold a pile of gibberish.  For a particular configuration (physical size (e.g., 3.5"), rotational speed, and number of platters), the power consumption of a disk drive will be rather independent of the capacity.  I won't dispute that your Mac seems to have lacked enough power for reliable operation of your drive, but the capacity of that disk was not the controlling factor.

[Sorry if this is a repeat, I haven't been able to read all 370+ postings on this thread]

A fortuitous ("lucky"?) set of circumstances might have helped me understand this issue. But, first of all, I had never experienced anything like it previously with any OS, Apple's or other (23 years being a semi-nerd). Yet, with this brand-new MacBook Pro 2.3 GHz IC i7, it happened almost immediately – both Firewire and USB ejecting themselves.

As I look at it, there are weak and strong connections. In my case:

Weak connections

1 m-long Firewire 400 cable chaining 1Tb harddisk (800/400 Fw) to external (400-only) CD/DVD drive, then 4.5 m-long Firewire 400 cable to computer;

USB-stick plugged on "elderly "Apple external keyboard, itself plugged in external (powered) Cinema Display's USB port.

Strong connections

1 m Firewire 800 cable between harddisk and computer (I haven't tested yet the capabilities of the external CD/DVD-drive, which is now plugged to the harddisk via the 4.5 m Firewire 400 cable);

USB-stick plugged in external USB hub (unpowered, in this case), itself plugged in Cinema Display's USB port.

As anyone might have guessed by now, while the "weak connections" led to random ejections, even while  the devices were being accessed for file transfer, the "strong connections" have remained absolutely stable after several days of use.

While this understanding might help us in finding work-arounds – such as shuffling our complete office setups, and/or looking forward to the unwished-for replacement of our Firewire 400 devices – it doesn't tell us why Apple apparently hasn't addressed the issue, or why either the latest hardware or the latest system software won't support "weak connections" any longer.

I believe I can close my Firewire / disk eject issue.

@Richard, you were right - it was a temperature issue. But not with the Drobo, it was with the iMac itself. When exceeding a certain temperature, the firewire bus in my iMac 24 seems to get flaky, even though it had - in terms of temperature - been working in the exact same environment for the past couple of years.

I installed smcFanControl to manually set a lower limit to the fan speed, and for the last 24 hours I have not seen the eject problem again, even though I have been copying large amounts of data to and from the external disks for hours.

So I can definitely exclude 10.6.7 from my list of causes, unless there has been a change in handling the internal temperature control routines, which caused the iMac not to cool as effectively as before.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.