External hard-drive ejects but doesn't power down. Has to shut down computer to unplug.

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External hard-drive ejects but doesn't power down. Has to shut down computer to unplug.

Is anyone having this same issue? My external hard drive ejects safely when I eject it, but it doesn't power down. If I try to unplug it, it makes a loud squeak, like a sound it's NOT support to make... It's like it ejects but it's still spinning. I have to shut down my imac to eject my drive completely and power down so I can unplug it without risking damage. This doesn't happen every single time, about every other or so...

This is an imac desktop retina display, Mojave 10.14.5. The drive is a WD My Passport Ultra. I'm a photographer, the last thing I want to do is corrupt my drive because it doesn't power down when ejected... I never had this issue on High Sierra, wondering if this is a problem, read someone else was having this issue when upgraded to Mojave. Any fixes for this??

Thanks, Ester

PS. Not sure why this post is showing "Apple Watch" on the top... I selected Imac as the device...

Posted on Jul 29, 2019 7:42 PM

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Answer 1

den.thed

Level 10

91,780 points

Jul 29, 2019 8:06 PM in response to eknowlen

It's the WD drive enclosure that is the problem, not your Mac or the WD drive inside. Don't get me wrong, I really like WD bare drives and even have a couple of older external passports that spin down after ejecting them. Like you, I tried one of the newer WD Passports and for the same reason, returned it and went with a Seagate Slim. Currently I have 3 different size Seagate Slims, two connect to one Mac and one connected to the other Mac and guess what, they all work as expected.

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External hard-drive ejects but doesn't power down. Has to shut down computer to unplug.

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