Q: Disk Drive ejecting itself

Starhawk wrote:

 

Wow, things are looking good! I installed:

 

IOUSBFamily.kext

IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext

 

from 10.6.4 using the instructions above on a Macbook Pro, and I've currently written 1TB and counting to my iNeo dock that would otherwise have ejected long ago.

As one who also started having this issue after the 10.5 update came out, I plan to try this soon, too. I have already lost a 1.1TB partition on my Drobo (corrupted) full of data, so I have been trying to use my drives at little as possible. Several Mac OS X updates later, with the problem remaining, I'm getting tired of waiting.

Did you follow the provided Pacifist steps, but only replaced those two .kext files (instead of all the USB ones)?

My external USB drive ejected 3 times yesterday morning so I tried installing IOUSBFamiy.kext and IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext from 10.6.4 using Pacifist and Kext Helper, then followed with a reboot.  The hard drive stayed mounted for about a day, but it just self-ejected.  Guess I'll go back to the current (10.6.7) kernel extensions since this didn't resolve the issue.

@Voje: Sorry, I'm not convinced that temperature is at the heart of the issue. I've had these disconnects&reconnects happen randomly, regardless of whether there was some temperature-raising activity taking place – on this new MacBook Pro, the fan revs up as soon as I copy more than just a few dozen Mb's, so I think that I'd know.

My notion of weak vs. strong Firewire and USB connections has in the meanwhile been corroborated by a new circumstance. I noticed that my external CD/DVD drive (now plugged as described in the "Strong connection" bit of my post above under Username tingo[at]tanca[dot]com) was being accessed at random, i.e. the LED was going on and off and the drive was making some click sounds 2-3 times before going to rest again. This being a new system and setup, I was puzzled and thought at first that what was at work was some function I wasn't aware of, or even some unauthorized external access. Yet it didn't matter that I turned off DVD sharing (which anyway is "blocked by Firewall" when it's on). Then I had the idea of putting a DVD in the drive and letting it sit there (which implies not heat-causing reading or copying of files). Sure enough, after a while, it unmounted and mounted again by itself.

That was with this drive, Firewire 400-only, connected with the 4.5 m long cable. I tried with a 1.8 m Firewire 400 cable instead, and during time I tested it it, the DVD unmounted and mounted again only once. Still one time to many, especially if I'd happened to be burning a disk at that moment. So I put an even shorter cable, this time 1 m-long with one of those blobs whose function I don't have a clue about. Since then I've had no disconnect/unmount whatsoever.

@Voje

Hey, if I got something right how about awarding me some points!  Maybe I can get a free car.... heheheh

Heat is the enemy of electronics.  If electronics did not get hot, it might never fail.  Maybe, one day, we can accomplish that - there is lots of research into room temperature superconductors for this reason.  But we digress.

The heat/cool cycle degrades electronics - its slow - but eventually after many cycles and hours of operation the degradation is enough to change how the electronics works.  There are other factors too.  Like dust build up.  I have pulled apart laptops for example that were only 6 months old, but getting hot enough to scare the owner.  And I find the fan or heat sink plugged with fur.  "oh I have a cat, and it likes to sleep beside (or on) the laptop" they say.  uh-huh.  Or just caked with dust.  In either case, I clean the heat sink and fan so its shiny again and everything works as it was.

So, maybe your beast needs some cleaning?   Or maybe its degrading with age?  Very hard to tell.  Keeping the fan ON is a much more reliable solution.

Glad to be of service.

@ cgreco16

Please post the chipset info for that drive.  Read back a few pages to see examples and instructions.

@tingotanca  and

@tingo@tanca.com

How did you wind up with TWO ids? Very confusing.

I think your mistaken.  With respect to the FW connections, there are no "weak" or "strong" connections.  As part of the FW specification if a device has two FW 400 jacks, then it must provide a buffer and driver.  This allows daisy-chaining FW devices together, cable lengths are almost unimportant.   You can read the details on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewire/.  But in summary your allowed 16 links of up to 4.5m each.  Your nowhere near that limit.

USB on the other hand, has many issues. More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB

Previous people with FW devices auto-ejecting turned out to have either (a) a defective device, frequently recalled by the mfr, or (b) a thernal problem.

Your Optical drive "twitching" sounds like something is trying to read it. The most likely suspect is Spotlight, be sure to add the drive to the EXCLUDE list so Spotlight leaves it alone.

If you want help, I need a LOT more details.  Please post:

- Drive make and model

- USB chipset in the USB drives and hubs - if they are ejecting.

But if its a FW device ejecting, I'd first check for a product recall or service report.  Followed by over-heating of the drive or your computer.  As Voje found out...

Dummy reply to get your attention in case you don't get a notice of my reply to your post using your other id.

Capacity:          2 TB (2,000,398,934,016 bytes)

  Removable Media:          Yes

  Detachable Drive:          Yes

  BSD Name:          disk1

  Product ID:          0x1340

  Vendor ID:          0x13fd  (Initio Corporation)

  Version:           2.10

  Serial Number: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  Speed:          Up to 480 Mb/sec

  Manufacturer:          FANTOM 

  Location ID:          0xfd130000

  Current Available (mA):          500

  Current Required (mA):          2

  Partition Map Type:          GPT (GUID Partition Table)

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

I have a Intel MacMini 2 GHz with several drives (including an original USB Drobo with 4 two tb drives) conntected via a powered USB hubs (however, the drobo is connected direct to the MacMini). All dives were sold as a rock with 10.6.4. Starting with 10.6.5, the USB drives would drop for no reason. I have tried all Mac OS updates since 10.6.4 and the same problem occurred. Drops could happen every hour. I have chaned the USB cables, but the problem continues. After doing each OS update, I would downgrade back to 10.6.4 and problem would disappear (I never learned my leason.....if it works, don't fix it).

My drobo is my main storage area and the other drives are backups of the drobo and the MacMini internal drive.

I must say that the Drobo will drop  once every 2 to 4 weeks (machine is running 24/7) for no known reason in 10.6.4.

Therefore, I think the problem is in the OS. It is not a hardware issue. Any upgrade to 10.6.5 thru 10.6.7 would cause the problem, even when cable is changed.

I'm stuck in 10.6.4, and will be scared to upgrade to Lion when it comes out (or the rumored 10.6.8 udpate). BTW, I don't miss the App Store (at least not yet).

@Richard E. Cooke

I don't deny that overheating isn't good for proper 'puter behaviour, and following your line of thought, I'd recommend to anyone, assuming they're sitting in a reasonably clean environment, to open their babies once every six months and vacuum their guts – with all due precautionary measures of course, like not touching any of the elements with the nozzle.

But computer components are built to take heat, quite a bit of heat. Of course, you'll always get the one odd device or element that's badly conceived or badly built. In years of working with different computers in tropical or tropical-like environments, I've heard enough constant fan noise to drive me insane, yet I have had only one PowerBook Titanium that overheated so much when processing overly intensive routines (Tech Tools 5 defrag, which I have now dropped, both the app and the defrag, but that's another story) that it got burning hot and regularly fainted with a kernel crash. Another PWB, same Tech Tools routines, same model, same age, same build, but much more worn and with a long history of hardware issues (that's back when Apple's hardware wasn't nearly as distinguished as their image), never had the slightest problem related to overheating. This thread tells us that dozens of people have a problem, and you want them all to have an overheating problem, or bad devices?

I do tend to believe in effects not being caused by one single cause, but by clusters of causes, and that's not only in matters of geopolitics, where it should be obvious to most, but also in the applied sciences, or in computer technology. In this particular case, though – drives and devices ejecting at random – temperature may be a factor for some people on their specific machines, but I cannot see how it is relevant as far as I am concerned. Please read again attentively what I've posted above, and maybe you'll understand why:

1. No copying or other processor-intensive routines involved, besides operating in a normal environment (22°C)
2. All affected: USB stick, Firewire harddisk, DVD/CD drive plugged on "weak" connections – that is, respectively, into a USB keyboard, or Firewire cables over a certain length.
3. Not affected: Firewire devices plugged in with shorter Firewire cables, nor (as I have just discovered, after writing the above) 1Tb or 500Gb USB drives plugged directly into the computer's USB port.

I do not need any help, thank you, the problem is resolved as far as I'm concerned – no devices ejecting anymore on my MacBook Pro after I proceeded as described. I'm aware that it's only a workaround, for (in reply to ticzon) I think the random unmounting is due to the system software tackling poorly the hardware – any hardware, considering the variety of Mac models and devices mentioned in this thread. And, believe me, I don't think it's funny to make do with a workaround, a clumsy one at that. But as long as Apple doesn't issue a fix, I can't really see what other choices there might be: new MacBook Pros only boot in 10.6.6 and up, so downgrading is not an option.

Last, to address your first point, Richard, that 4,5m 400 Firewire cable, which was already a replacement for a first one we believed was defective, wouldn't work at all (wouldn't mount the drives) on PPC machines running Tiger (OSX 10.4.11), but worked fine on an Intel machine under OSX 10.6.3. I'm also curious to know how you'd tell Spotlight to exclude a drive, not a volume.

i'm having this random external eject issue as well. has applecare helped any of you with this issue? i had a pre-intel G5 die on me so i moved the 1TB drive and the original 250drive into a ROSEWILL enclosure to use with the macbook pro that i bought. the drives seem to be working just fine and i thought i had solved the issue by unchecking the 'put the drives to sleep...' button in energy savor but it ejected on me today after coming out of sleep. i guess i'll keep ejecting the drive while i'm not using it until i hear of any fixes.

thoughts?

Hi Everyone,

I was hoping for the good news to send you from my side, but the things took an odd turn.

To remind you, I have send a 2 TB G-Tech hard drive (few weeks old) for a replacement one since it had this ejecting problem when connected via FW. I have explained my problem to G-Tech people and it seemed that they have accepted their fault by giving me a RMA number.

1. I have paid about $30 to ship the defective drive.

2. It took them (Hitachi USA) 3 weeks to send me (here in Canada) a replacement one from the moment they have received mine.

3. They did not send me a new one, but refurbished drive (they said that they never give back a new one to anyone).

4. Instead of sending me a 2 TB drive, they made a mistake and sent me a 1 TB drive.

I have been communicating with HitachiGST Technical Support people for the last couple of days letting them to know about this whole thing, but they were hard to please and they had hard time accepting their mistake.

After all, they concluded that the part # on the refurbished drive refers to a 1 TB drive, but the serial # on this same refurbished drive refers to the a 2 TB drive. Therefore, they told me, I must of received a 2 TB drive. The situation is even more surreal, since the refurbished drive came with a packing slip that indicates a serial # of my original defective drive.

So, here I'm 4 weeks later, with 1 TB refurbished drive. Works fine, no ejecting. I just wanted you to know that I will never, ever buy another G-Tech drive. It happened this time to me to pay for a brand new drive, and to end up with a refurbished one of half of the storage size, but I will make sure that this is the last time I go through something like this. Maybe I should of gone to the Apple Store and return it there (since I bought it there), but now its too late.

Hope you guys get better experience and that your problem is resolved with less stress then mine.

This seems to only happen to me when I'm running on battery power. My 1T USB drive mysteriously and unexpectedly ejects. When the power adapter is connected, all is well - at least so far.

I know this only applies to macbook users.

But those of you on towers - try connecting to the front USB port (more power) and see if you have better results.

This is not tru at all. It's all lies!

@tingotanca

Dude, click on my name, then link to my posts.  Its a quick way to see a digest of my posts on this thread.  As you say, each machine is unique.  I do not in any of my previous posts see anyplace I imply "its always thermal".  I would appreciate it if you could help me out by pointing it out to me.

How long have you been in the Tropics?  Is that the only location you support?  This is very important question, because precious few consumer electronics are designed to work in the tropics.  You will have several very strange problems just from the humidity.  My personal pet peeve is condensation.  It likes to form above cooling parts, or in the corners of hot cabinets.  Go to Home Depot and buy lots of Dessicant.  Put it inside of everything you can.  A lot of your problems will go away after its had a few days to dry out the air inside of the cabinets.

Working in Air Conditioned rooms helps only if you NEVER take the hardware out of the room.  And never shut off the A/C.  As soon as you do either, you get nice moist warm air inside of the devices. When you go back into the A/C the water condenses.  I have seen a MBP die from condensation under the keyboard, formed by popping into and out of A/C buildings at an outdoor sports event in Hawaii - the Photographer owner of it was NOT amused when it croaked uploading pics to his client.  Apple put moisture detectors in there to catch it, but all that does is get you into an argument over whether you spilled a drink on the keyboard or not.