Q: Disk Drive ejecting itself

Did you get it with an older product(1.0) or a newer one(2.0)? It might say somewhere on it, but that's a long shot. It would be interesting to know.

Seems it's 1.0. It's from a modem from my service provider (router pirelli discus drg a112).
Anyhow, I'm getting 2.0 speed with this cable.

Check these links:
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10166_7-5577434-1.html
http://forums.macnn.com/57/consumer-hardware-and-components/327041/usb-1-0-vs-2- 0-a/

I checked other forums and people say that cables are all the same, except that old USB cables are not shielded. The USB cable I'm using now is much more thinner than the one I was using, so probably is not shielded.

I am having the same issue! My external hard drive is a firewire, and I am running Snow Lepoard. Ever since the last software update this has been happening! First it ejects itself, then after a while, it reconnects!!

I have tried changing the cable, checking the disc for errors (there were none), checking and verifying the permissions - and still it happens.

I wish they would hurry up and fix this! My external hard drive holds all my important back up files!

Not sure if this is an option, but did you try to use USB instead of Firewire?

I guess there is an option for USB. Like for me. While the FW is unable to work I use USB interface on the same drive.
This is not why I bought a FW drive, I bought it for performance which I couldn't use now, USB I have enough already, but at least through USB there is still a workaround while the fix arrives (assuming, it arrives).

Not sure if this will help anyone, but here goes.

I recently got a Seagate external USB 1.5 TB disc and after successfully using it with a Netgear ReadyNAS I plugged it into my Intel iMac running 10.6.3 and could not write to it as it was NTFS - Doh! Downloaded and installed MacFuse and NTFS-3G and was happily using it, but started to encounter the "Disk ejected improperly" message on the iMac. So started again and formatted the drive as a single partition Mac HFS Extended. Still got the disk ejecting itself so tried it on my MBpro and was getting similar problems.

Having looked at this thread I thought I would try re-partitioning the drive and I noticed that although the disc was formatted as Mac it was still using the windows MBR partitioning scheme. So I re-partitioned with two 750GB partitions but chose GUID under options in Disk Utility. Copied around 60GB to one partition and the drive has not disconnected itself.

I am not sure if it's down to changing to GUID or making the partitions smaller, but it's been working fine now for an hour or more - which is at least twice as long as remained connected in its previous state.

If it starts disconnecting again I will post here.

Ignore my last post GUID makes no difference. Just plugged the ting into my iMac and I got the dreaded disconnect error.

Same here, external Firewire device has hung all the time before (Time Machine has never been stable!) and then all of the sudden it started to eject the disk right after it was switched on. It is throwing back +The disc was not ejected properly...+ dialogue as seen on http://twitpic.com/1fihk1

Given the above *Time Machine has rendered unusable*, so that if anyone has a workaround, your post would be greatly appreciated!

Ain Tohvri wrote:
Same here, external Firewire device has hung all the time before (Time Machine has never been stable!) and then all of the sudden it started to eject the disk right after it was switched on. It is throwing back +The disc was not ejected properly...+ dialogue as seen on http://twitpic.com/1fihk1

Given the above *Time Machine has rendered unusable*, so that if anyone has a workaround, your post would be greatly appreciated!

I've just reported this to Apple Bug Reporter with all the enclosed info, ID #7862303.

As I found no solution I simply erased the disk and redeployed it in Time Machine.

Before you switch on the disk, launch Disk Utility, switch the disk on and in Disk Utility locate the Time Machine disk as it appears there (in yellow), click it and Erase before it gets ejected.

*It's not a solution, but a rather critical workaround*. Since Apple hasn't addressed any of the issues I've reported during last months to their Bug Reporter about Time Machine, I had no time to wait until they may or may not do something about it.

I am having a variation of the same problem. Everything in my current setup was working 2 or 3 days ago and suddenly this "disk was not ejected properly" this morning....

I have a Panasonic video camera which I connect through a FW DV cable to my external HD's FW400 port, from which I connect to the MBP's FW800 port. (I'm sufficiently ****** off that there is only a FW800 on this bloody expensive computer and so much of my equipment runs on FW400.)

I was working with a live video mixing program. Everything was working and then I plugged in and turned on my camera, and then "disk was not ejected properly." At first I thought it was the software, so I restarted (after repairing permissions etc in Onyx and running updates) and plugged in and turned on camera before starting ANY program.

Same problem.

This is a serious problem. I work with a video and need to be able to plug in my camera in order to get footage off from tapes.

Anyone else have the same issue? And dare I ask.. a solution?

Hi, I have Macbook pro 5,3 running Mac osx10.6.3 connected with Lacie and Hitachi USB drive powered separately. Eversince last update. I see the drives being ejected by iteself without any reason and one point after reconnecting drive not reading in the mac at all but I have old imac running 10.4 and the drives read properly on them as well as no ejection issue. Any idea on this?

Hi, I've just bought a 2TB Seagate external drive. When I plugged in the drive for the first time Mac Pro (10.6.3) did not recognized it (not even by Disk Utility). I've used Windows XP it worked fine. I've re-plugged in to Mac and managed to format the drive in MacOS format. However the drive is know self ejecting itself quite often.

I have an iomega ext drive. all was well for the last few weeks and then suddenly, the same problem as all of you have described. Ejects after a few minutes of TM trying to run. V V V frustrating. Not sure but I think it may have started after a system update to 10.6.3.

COME ON APPLE... PLEASE FIX THIS.