external hard drive "disk not ejected properly" - it ejects randomly when I'm in the middle of using it

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SAAG77 Author

Level 1

24 points

external hard drive "disk not ejected properly" - it ejects randomly when I'm in the middle of using it

I don't know what's going on, and thought maybe someone here can help me.

I have an external hard drive that I use every day for work stuff.

I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013).

I'm running Mojave on it, version 10.14.6, build 18G103.

Up until a couple of days ago, my portable hard drive worked fine. But then it started randomly ejecting and remounting all by itself over and over again. Sometimes I can work for 10 seconds before it randomly ejects itself, other times I can get 5 minutes of work done. Either way, it's not acceptable because it's hard to get anything done when you keep getting kicked off whatever file you're working with (because it's on the portable hard drive).

Energy saver settings are as follows, and do NOT appear to solve the problem:

>>I activated the following 2 options under Power Adapter>>

"Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off"

"Wake for Wi-Fi network access"

>>I activated the following 1 option under Battery>>

"Slightly dim the display while on battery power"

I tried using the app Amphetamine to prevent my laptop from sleeping if this hard drive is connected. This didn't help.

So I don't know what to do. This is making my workflow impossible. There are no new apps other than me trying Amphetamine.

Posted on Sep 28, 2019 4:14 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

den.thed

Level 10

82,108 points

Sep 28, 2019 5:40 PM in response to SAAG77

Sounds like the connection, the cable, the drive enclosure or the drive is failing.

What external hard drive?

Do you have a backup of the data on that external hard drive?

Personally I would try another port and then another cable. If that didn't work, then I would remove the drive from the enclosure and try it in another enclosure, in a dock or on an USB to SATA adapter.

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Answer 2

SAAG77 Author

Level 1

24 points

Sep 28, 2019 5:45 PM in response to den.thed

Man oh man... I just tried a different hard drive and it works fine. So it must be the drive that's the issue. :( Thank-you for the help - I feel silly for not thinking of that, but I guess I saw so many people reporting weird hard drive issues online that I assume it was some glitch, not the drive itself!

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Answer 3

SAAG77 Author

Level 1

24 points

Sep 28, 2019 6:23 PM in response to SAAG77

Oh, ignore my comment above... I hooked up the hard drive to my husband's Macbook Pro (identical model as mine), and the hard drive that constantly ejects on my Macbook is fine on his. I've had it running non-stop for the past 30 minutes to make copies of some stuff for which my only copy is on that drive (so I'll have a backup in the worst case scenario that it's failing).

So why is it working on my husband's Macbook, but not mine?

One thing that is different about my Macbook is that the battery status is "Replace soon" however, I only ever use my Macbook with the Power adapter these days, and it's fully charged... so I don't think the battery status is likely to be the issue? (Apparently if I want to replace the batter, I have to live without my Macbook for an entire week, per my local Apple Store... and since I use it for work, this isn't an option... I can't take over my husband's because his is also for work.)

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Answer 4

SAAG77 Author

Level 1

24 points

Sep 29, 2019 12:05 PM in response to den.thed

Yeah, same result even on the other USB port.

I bought a new hard drive today - it's another WD passport - and this drive is working fine. So maybe it WAS an issue with the other drive starting to fail. The other drive (the one that kept ejecting) was 4 years old and used heavily (I do video editing through that drive, to save space on my laptop), so given the expected lifespan of a portable external drive, it wouldn't be unheard of for it to start to falter at this age.

Anyways, I figured I'd update this thread so if anyone else has the same issue, they'll consider the age of the ejecting drive sooner than I did.

For some reason I had this expectation that my drive could last decades if I took care of it - clearly I was delusional, based on the Google research I've now done into how long one can reasonably expect an external portable drive to last LOL

Live and learn, right? :)

Also, regarding what I wrote re: "I hooked up the hard drive to my husband's Macbook Pro (identical model as mine), and the hard drive that constantly ejects on my Macbook is fine on his." - one possibly relevant point is that the drive took WAY longer to show up in finder compared to my other backup drive that was NOT ejecting itself. So maybe this delay in being recognized by his Macbook (compared to newer drives) is a sign that something is indeed starting to go faulty on the drive.

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Answer 5

den.thed

Level 10

82,108 points

Sep 29, 2019 2:15 PM in response to SAAG77

Thanks for reporting back.

Unfortunately WD passport enclosures (not WD drives) are no where near as reliable as they used to be and I've seen a lot of premature failure reports.

Personally for backup and file storage to free up space, I prefer using a higher quality external hard drive and/or a higher quality enclosure or dock that I can put an HDD or SSD into.

In any event, both internal and external drives can fail at anytime. So it is crucial that you always backup both your internal and external file storage drives.

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Answer 6

fuzzymo

Level 4

2,030 points

Sep 28, 2019 5:39 PM in response to SAAG77

This is just a guess. It seems like you might have a faulty cable connecting your drive to the Mac. If you can find another cable, try it and see if it helps.

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