judithnewman

Q: Disk Drive ejecting itself

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.

iMac5,1 Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Sep 9, 2009 5:40 PM

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Q: Disk Drive ejecting itself

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  • by Ellen74,

    Ellen74 Ellen74 Nov 28, 2011 7:39 PM in response to Ellen74
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 28, 2011 7:39 PM in response to Ellen74

    This is a follow-up to my first post.  I think I've narrowed down the problem and solution (I hope!).

     

    Since my original post, the eject problem, but not the freezing problem, recurred twice (each time I had disconnected my laptop from all peripherals, used it elsewhere, then later reconnected the external drive).  Upon reconnection, the external drive either failed to mount or else mounted and ejected itself every few seconds.

     

    I fixed the problem by using the freeware utility Onyx's "Automation Panel" to rebuild both  "display of folders content" (which deletes all invisible .DS_Store files) and also to rebuild the "Spotlight Index."

     

    [This seems to agree with a post in another thread attributing the eject problem to Spotlight trying to index a problem folder??    Go to:  https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2138946?start=60&tstart=0

    Then scroll down to the August 3. 2010 post by turnbull.]

     

    If your system is freezing as well, run something like DiskWarrior (or perhaps Disk Utility will work) on both the internal and external drives.

  • by ankhank,

    ankhank ankhank Dec 6, 2011 9:49 AM in response to judithnewman
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Dec 6, 2011 9:49 AM in response to judithnewman

    dang, I just bought one of these 750GB G-drives -- firewire 800/USB --  from Apple -- it was delivered yesterday -- and it's  done this 'improperly ejected' thing in the first 12 hours connected by firewire to a mid-2011 Mini.

    And I was hoping this drive would give me a good backup from the many permission/ACL problems with Lion 10.7.2.

     

     

    How did I miss these problem reports??  I should have been more suspicious, as always.

  • by Richard E. Cooke,

    Richard E. Cooke Richard E. Cooke Dec 6, 2011 11:16 AM in response to ankhank
    Level 2 (220 points)
    Dec 6, 2011 11:16 AM in response to ankhank

    @ankhank

     

    No, you should call Apple Support!  They support what they sell.

     

    Please post back what happens.

  • by Kelly Davis,

    Kelly Davis Kelly Davis Dec 6, 2011 5:37 PM in response to ankhank
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Notebooks
    Dec 6, 2011 5:37 PM in response to ankhank

    Please do contact apple support - and report back to this thread.  I suspect that Apple will want to do a clean install of the OS on your mini. This would be further evidence that the problem lies there and not with the hardware, although, it will not get us any closer to finding exactly what the problem is.

  • by ankhank,

    ankhank ankhank Dec 6, 2011 6:23 PM in response to Kelly Davis
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Dec 6, 2011 6:23 PM in response to Kelly Davis

    I'm now booting from a clean installed 10.7.2 on one external drive, and watching the other one, the new drive ; it hasn't disconnected itself all day.  We'll see how it does overnight. 

  • by Kelly Davis,

    Kelly Davis Kelly Davis Dec 18, 2011 10:05 AM in response to Richard E. Cooke
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Notebooks
    Dec 18, 2011 10:05 AM in response to Richard E. Cooke

    I installed the debug version of the USB drivers and used the USB Prober to log USB activity during a disconnect.

     

    Here is a link to the log I captured:

     

    Google doc:

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qtVfgEsnrgM956z_eiMVR70mVJhJeKWBvsPPIdUbFs4/ edit

     

    Original Text file:

    https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1jRLtTHFE2LNjZiYmFjZjItZjdkMS00NDBmLWJkOGQtMzg 5MDk2OTc1YTQ5

     

    I started capturing activity immediately after connecting the drive. You can see the drive being found and connected. I then started a backup and waited for the disconnect and immediately created a time marker. If you go to the time marker (464.567), and walk back up, you can view what was happening up to the disconnect.

     

    Here are some things that I noticed that may be of interest.

     

      220.708 [6]          AppleUSBHubPort[0x728a800]::ShouldApplyDisconnectWorkaround - port 1 - time since wake: 269965 ms

      220.708 [5]          AppleUSBHubPort[0x728a800]::AddDeviceResetChangeHandler - Port 1 of Hub at 0x24000000 (USB Address: 3), calling registerService for device JM20336 SATA, USB Combo

      220.708 [5]          AppleUSBHubPort[0x728a800]::AddDeviceResetChangeHandler - port 1, err = 0, ALL DONE

     

    Here is what the code for ShouldApplyDisconnectWorkaround (from AppleUSBHubPort.cpp) does:

     

    if ( ShouldApplyDisconnectWorkaround() )

    {

                        USBLog(5, "AppleUSBHubPort[%p]::ResetPort for port %d, will wait 500 ms", this, _portNum);

                        IOSleep(500);

                        wait100ms = true;

    }

     

    Not sure if this is related or not.

     

      402.990 [5]          IOUSBPipe[0x746a340]::ClearPipeStall

      402.990 [5]          +AppleUSBOHCI[0x7232800]: clearing endpoint 2:1 stall

      402.990 [6]          AppleUSBOHCI[0x7232800]::ReturnTransactions: (0x7e028de0, 0x7e028d20)

      402.990 [3]          IOUSBHIDDriver(AppleUSBMultitouchDriver)[0x746b000]::InterruptReadHandler error kIOReturnAborted. Try again.

      402.990 [5]          -AppleUSBOHCI[0x7232800]: clearing endpoint 2:1 stall

      402.990 [5]          IOUSBPipe[0x746a340]::ClearPipeStall Int or Isoc endpoint, don't clear TT (or err: 0x0)

      402.991 [5]          IOUSBPipe[0x740a240]::ClearPipeStall

      402.991 [5]          +AppleUSBOHCI[0x7232800]: clearing endpoint 2:3 stall

      402.991 [6]          AppleUSBOHCI[0x7232800]::ReturnTransactions: (0x7e028550, 0x7e0283f0)

      402.991 [5]          IOUSBHIDDriver(AppleUSBTCKeyboard)[0x73af200]::InterruptReadHandler error kIOReturnAborted. Expected.  Not rearming interrupt

      402.991 [5]          -AppleUSBOHCI[0x7232800]: clearing endpoint 2:3 stall

      402.991 [5]          IOUSBPipe[0x740a240]::ClearPipeStall Int or Isoc endpoint, don't clear TT (or err: 0x0)

      402.992 [5]          IOUSBPipe[0x758e140]::ClearPipeStall

      402.992 [5]          +AppleUSBOHCI[0x7232800]: clearing endpoint 2:4 stall

      402.992 [6]          AppleUSBOHCI[0x7232800]::ReturnTransactions: (0x7e0283a0, 0x7e0288f0)

      402.992 [5]          IOUSBHIDDriver(AppleUSBTCButtons)[0x74f9200]::InterruptReadHandler error kIOReturnAborted. Expected.  Not rearming interrupt

      402.992 [5]          -AppleUSBOHCI[0x7232800]: clearing endpoint 2:4 stall

      402.992 [5]          IOUSBPipe[0x758e140]::ClearPipeStall Int or Isoc endpoint, don't clear TT (or err: 0x0)

      402.993 [5]          IOUSBHIDDriver(AppleUSBMultitouchDriver)[0x746b000]::SuspendPort (suspend), timeout: 0, _outstandingIO = 2

      402.993 [5]          IOUSBPipe[0x746a340]::AbortPipe

     

      403.805 [5]          AppleUSBHubPort[0x732fe00]::PortStatusChangedHandler - port 3 - status(0x0103) - change(0x0000) - before call to (2) handler function

      403.805 [5]          AppleUSBHubPort[0x732fe00]::HandleSuspendPortHandler for port(3) _portPMState (2) changeFlags:(0) _resumePending: (false)

      403.805 [3]          AppleUSBOHCI[0x7232800]::ClearRootHubPortFeature - renabling RHSC interrupt due to clear feature 18

      403.815 [5]          AppleUSBHubPort[0x732fe00]::HandleSuspendPortHandler _suspendChangeAlreadyLogged: false

      403.815 [5]          AppleUSBHubPort[0x732fe00]::HandleSuspendPortHandler  Port 3 of Hub at 0x6000000 - device issued remote wakeup, may be wake reason (453024 ms since wake)

      403.815 [5]          AppleUSBHubPort[0x732fe00]::HandleSuspendPortHandler finish

      403.815 [3]          AppleUSBHubPort[0x732fe00]::WakeSuspendCommand  calling commandWakeUp

  • by hagi-dd,

    hagi-dd hagi-dd Dec 28, 2011 3:26 AM in response to judithnewman
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 28, 2011 3:26 AM in response to judithnewman

    I've had a very similar issue and could fix it.

     

    The problem: I bought a WD MyPassport Essential SE (1TB), but securely re-formatting it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) under Mac OS X Lion failed on both my iMac (2011) and my MacBook Pro (2008), using the Disk Utility app.

     

    I first thought it would be a hardware problem, so I exchanged it with a new one from the shop I bought it - from today's perspective, not surprisingly, the same errors occurred. A simple & fast reformatting (with Disk Utility) went through though, but when I tried to copy large files onto the new disk, I got the "The disk was not ejected properly..." message in Finder.

     

    At no time I was using any of the provided WD software tools.

     

    My Solution: I sort of combined a few things I've read here and there and it worked for me, although I cannot tell whether all steps are necessary. I'm happy that it works and not very keen to play around with it anymore...

     

    (1) Turn off "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" option in the Energy Saver preferences.

    (2) Download WD firmware update: http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/wdsmartwareupdate/firmware.asp?id=wdfMP_SEEssentia l_forMac&os=MAC

    (3) Download WD Quick Formatter tool: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/search/1/a_id/3868

    (4) Run the firmware update - make sure you follow WD's instructions, and reboot afterwards.

         (Note: You have to physically unplug all other USB/Firewire drives - just ejecting them does not work)

    (5) Run the Quick Formatter app.

     

    That worked for me - at least I've been copying ~300GB of data without any problems so far. Hope this helps somebody.

  • by elevenmedia,

    elevenmedia elevenmedia Dec 30, 2011 6:41 AM in response to judithnewman
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 30, 2011 6:41 AM in response to judithnewman

    Long time reader, first time poster. I had a very important Seagate 2TB External spontaniously eject for a few days until it finally could not mount. I tried everything to get it back, but that is another story.

     

    I have two 1TB LaCie and one 2TB LaCie USB drive attached and they started to eject while copying a large amount of files. I could not get past 100gigs without it ejecting. It would also eject overnight, sometimes, if I left it connected.

     

    I read this post and a number of others about the issue and tried everything to get them to stop ejecting. I had also upgrade to Lion when the ejects started, so I automatically blamed Lion.

     

    Here is everything I tried:

    • Ran Disk Warrior and Tech Tool Pro on the drives but two would eject half way through the tests. No data was lost as I was only running tests.
    • Ran Tech Tool Pro and Disk Utilities on the iMac i7 hard-drive. Nothing found except a few wrong permissions.
    • Tried to revert back to Snow Leopard, but couldn't get it to install on the machine.
    • Researched to see if Apple partitians vs GUID partitions caused the issue, but ejects happened on both.
    • I didn't test to see if it was only USB and not firewire.
    • Tried different cables, less drives attached at once.
    • Changed powerbars from a UPS system to a normal powerbar.
    • Jiggled the cable, sacraficed some chocolate animals and cursed.

     

    Final solution that worked:

    I read on one of the discussions about power issues with the USB drives. I thought since all my drives were powered it didnt effect me. As it stuck in my head, I connected the drives to a cheap powered USB hub. That was pretty much it.

    • I can now transfer larger sets of files. 500gigs over night worked perfectly
    • Ran Tech Tool Pro to check all the sectors of the drive (which takes 8-9 hours) and it completed just fine.
    • No ejects .. and I should have had about 10 by now
    • It has only been a week since It has been running fine, but I have been able to succeed and everything is working as normal.

     

    What my designer's theory is (no hardware background):

    • Lion changed something about power signals through the USB connection that is ejecting on weaker signals and needs power to see the drive properly.
    • My USB interface card (or whatever it is) is starting to kick the bucket.

     

    Hope some of this helps. I don't say that I have to solution, but this is simply what worked for me.

  • by AUSSIESoph,

    AUSSIESoph AUSSIESoph Dec 30, 2011 4:25 PM in response to judithnewman
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 30, 2011 4:25 PM in response to judithnewman

    I had problems with my external drive ejecting every few minutes with an error msg "The disk was not ejected properly...." etc

    I just posted how I did it under another thread - here is my copy and paste.  Hope it helps!

     

    I too had "The disk was not ejected properly. If possible, always eject a disk before unplugging it or turning it off." every minute as it randomly recognised then ejected my my WD passport - admittedly I did drop the WD passport which disconnected earlier that day.  Im running OS X 10.7.2

    After some serious anxiety I managed to work out it wasnt my external hard drive that was the problem - it worked fine on my desktop.

    After surfing for the fix, I fiddled and fiddled and in the last 30 mins, no eject problems (so fingers crossed it's the real fix).

     

    Utilities - Disk Uitilities - Select Macintosh HD - First Aid - Repair Disk Permissions

    (this is a snap of the log:

    Group differs on “Library/Java”; should be 0; group is 80.

    2011-12-31 10:43:35 +1100: Permissions differ on “Library/Java”; should be drwxr-xr-x ; they are drwxrwxr-x .

    2011-12-31 10:43:35 +1100: Repaired “Library/Java”

    2011-12-31 10:43:42 +1100: User differs on “usr/share/collabd/coreclient/locales/zh_CN.lproj”; should be 94; user is 0.

    2011-12-31 10:43:42 +1100: Group differs on “usr/share/collabd/coreclient/locales/zh_CN.lproj”; should be 94; group is 0.

    2011-12-31 10:43:42 +1100: Repaired “usr/share/collabd/coreclient/locales/zh_CN.lproj”

    2011-12-31 10:43:42 +1100: User differs on “usr/share/collabd/coreclient/public/locales/zh_CN.lproj”; should be 94; user is 0.

    etc etc

     

    After Permission Repair completed, I just clicked on the Passport drive and in First aid - Verify and repair.

     

    So far it is still looking good! Phew! Now Im dashing out to buy another hard drive to back up just in case!!

  • by elevenmedia,

    elevenmedia elevenmedia Jan 2, 2012 6:14 PM in response to elevenmedia
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 2, 2012 6:14 PM in response to elevenmedia

    Still perfect connections on all four externals attached.

  • by sanatamim,

    sanatamim sanatamim Jan 2, 2012 10:21 PM in response to judithnewman
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 2, 2012 10:21 PM in response to judithnewman

    I have the same problem using  my 8 GB usb flash drive on my Imac .

    Whenever I want to copy something from my Imac onto the usb flah drive, the drive ejects itself in the middle of copying .

    I have tried formating the drive both in Fat32 and Ntfs system and I have Tuxera Ntfs installed on my Imac.

    Does anyone know the solution to this frustrating issue?

    Thanks!

  • by Ellen74,

    Ellen74 Ellen74 Jan 3, 2012 1:06 AM in response to Ellen74
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 3, 2012 1:06 AM in response to Ellen74

    This is my 3rd post.  I've now recognized a pattern.  Each time I disconnect my laptop from the external drive for a significant amount of time (e.g., a weekend trip), when I try to mount the drive again, the constant ejecting recurs.

     

    I can still fix it by running everything under the "Automation Panel" in the freeware utility Onyx.  From Titanium Software.  http://www.titanium.free.fr/index.php.

     

    In my last post, I thought some shortcuts might work, but for consistent success, I have to run everything in the panel  (includes repairing permissions, rebuilding spotlight index and display of folders content, etc.).  No idea what combination is fixing the problem. 

     

    Once fixed, the drive and Time Machine run fine for weeks until I again unmount/disconnect for some period of time (not sure whether hours or days triggers the problem).

     

    Message was edited by: Ellen74

  • by Jerry Fincher,

    Jerry Fincher Jerry Fincher Jan 4, 2012 7:51 AM in response to judithnewman
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iCloud
    Jan 4, 2012 7:51 AM in response to judithnewman

    Just came on board with a new 21.5 i5 Mid 2011 build date OSX 10.6.6

    I to started having the dismount issue. after system wakes up from sleep mode. I had not yet set up TM. I have a micro net 250GIG on it's own power. I'll post the system profile at the end. My external drive was connected to the FW800 port via a HAMA FW800-FW400 adaptor plug. Apple care said it was the HAMA adaptor causing the issues. I changed to a 1M USB2 cable. I then started getting warnings that my drive was failing. Disk Utility could do nothing. I was able to do a direct copy to the boot drive. I then performed an all zeros erase and reformat. I then set up that drive as a TM drive and did a 100+GIG backup. For the last three days things have been working fine. Waking from sleep, restart, And power on from shut down doesn't seem to cause any issues.

     

    Fingers crossed

     

     

    USB2.0 Storage Device:

     

      Capacity:    250.06 GB (250,059,350,016 bytes)

      Removable Media:    Yes

      Detachable Drive:    Yes

      BSD Name:    disk1

      Product ID:    0x2bcf

      Vendor ID:    0x0c0b  (Dura Micro, Inc.)

      Version:     0.01

      Serial Number:    200605282656

      Speed:    Up to 480 Mb/sec

      Manufacturer:    DMI

      Location ID:    0xfa120000 / 5

      Current Available (mA):    500

      Current Required (mA):    0

      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:    disk1s1

    Fantom External Drive:

      Capacity:    249.72 GB (249,715,376,128 bytes)

      Available:    139.7 GB (139,696,857,088 bytes)

      Writable:    Yes

      File System:    Journaled HFS+

      BSD Name:    disk1s2

      Mount Point:    /Volumes/Fantom External Drive

  • by bobw409,

    bobw409 bobw409 Jan 10, 2012 9:34 PM in response to judithnewman
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 10, 2012 9:34 PM in response to judithnewman

    Not to sound like a broken record, but....  I too am having a problem with my external hard drive ejecting without cause.  I have a 1TB Western Digital My Passport for my iTunes library.  I have been using it for over a year first on Snow Leopard and now on Lion OS.  This just started happening last Friday 1/6/12 when trying to download multiple podcasts.  Now I notice that it happens whenever I try to transfer multiple or large files.  It's a USB 3.0 drive so I tried another 3.0 cable as well as a 2.0 cable.  Both did not work.  I've plugged this drive into a PC running Windows Vista (I know I'll get crap for this...) and it works without issue.

     

    A friend of mine suggested that it could be because the drive is formatted as exFAT.  Has anyone else come across a problem with this formatting?

     

    What I'm in the process of doing now is transferring all the files from this drive to another (formatted as FAT32) and I will then reformat the troubled drive as fat or MAC journaled or whatever that is.  Does anyone have any confidence that this will solve the problem because I certainly don't.

     

    Oh, and I'm transferring the files using my PC because whenever I try to do it on my MACBook, the drive ejects.  Go figure!

  • by ankhank,

    ankhank ankhank Jan 11, 2012 6:49 AM in response to bobw409
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Jan 11, 2012 6:49 AM in response to bobw409

    Did you try an external power supply for the drive (even though it's supposed to be bus powered; like a powered hub)?  I'm about to try that with my "G-Drive" usb/firewire (from the Apple Store; Apple found no hardware problem with my Mini; nothing's apparently wrong with the drive.   They just don't get along; sometimes in the past hot-swapping another drive on a different USB port on the Mini caused the G-Drive to eject itself, but then that didn't happen at all for a month.

     

    Yesterday the drive just randomly ejected itself once, and failed to be found after sleep three times in 24 hours.

     

    So -- I'm going to try the external powered hub that someone suggested recently might help.

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