my macbook pro keeps ejecting my seagate external hard drive

I would suspect a bad external AC power supply on the drive. Have you tried a different FireWire cable just to be sure?

Most modern drives can cope with disconnections. However, if the disconnection occurs partway through a write process it's possible that the file being written will be corrupted. Corrupted files can cause problems later on.

When the correct procedures are used for disconnecting/ejecting a drive the process ensures that file corruption doesn't happen.

Neville

I had the same problem with a Seagate 2TB Expansion series external USB drive. Looks like it has something to do with the hard drive sleep mode. Under +System Preferences->Energy Saver+ I unchecked "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible". This fixed the problem for me.

Beware, this setting control all HDs, not just the external. Less than ideal if you use your external HD while battery powered, or are just concerned with overall electron suckage. The OS should be smart enough to know not to eject a USB drive when it puts it to sleep. This looks like a bug for Apple. Maybe the OS has no choice? It would be nice to have control of sleep states for each individual drive.

Message was edited by: mkarasoff

You can pass on this suggestion to Apple by using the Feedback contacts available through the 'Contact us' link at the bottom of this page. These feedbacks from users do come to Apple's attention.

Neville

Spoke too soon.

While disabling sleep appeared to fix things yesterday, this morning, just after waking up my computer from its nights rests, I had 2 more spurious ejections. So, looks like disabling sleep reduces frequency, but doesn't solve the problem altogether.

I'm going to try putting the drive in a firewire enclosure.

Thanks. Disabling sleep on individual drives would be a nice feature. I'll make the suggestion.

From Seagate's data sheet:
"Built-in power management ensures energy- efficient operation."

Does built in power management also ensure spurious ejections in OS X?

Took the 2TB hard drive out of the Seagate Expansion enclosure, and attached it to my computer using a Comkia SATA adapter. Drive works fine for the past day and a half with no disconnects. Not a bad hard drive.

I have a second Seagate Expansion that works fine on as an XP/NTFS external drive, but have the same problem when I attach to my Mac. Though that could be due to clunky NTFS support in OSX, I still suspect the Seagate Expansion enclosure does something the OS X doesn't like.

Think I need a new enclosure. Can anyone recommend an enclosure for my 2TB drive that is known to work with a MacBook Pro?

Message was edited by: mkarasoff

SeaGate has a FreeAgent Go sleep disable utility available to fix this problem.

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207851&Hilite =

I had the same problem with a western digital elements external HDD. The way i have fixed it was to go into disk utility and on the external HDD do a verify disk then a repair disk. Its been working for me without ejecting for the past 4 hours no problem. Before doing this fix it would eject about every 5 mins

I have a similar problem, and tried using Disk Utility to solve it. Half way through verifying the documents the drive was dropped again, with the usual message accusing me of failing to eject it properly. DU said the disk software checked out ok. Tried again, this time saw lots of little things among the document files which DU thought should be repaired. Repairs completed successfully.

Started Time Machine backup.

Had shower. Came down to find backup complete (I checked the disk). Then the disk disconnects itself again, and I'm accused again. Moved computer, disk re-attaches itself. Carried on typing this, drive disconnected twice (same message), but unusually, reconnected quite quickly. It remains connected as I type (on my knee), with its light winking. Wiggling the connectors of the short USB lead has no effect.

The external drive is a Seagate 640 GB

Sometimes the light on the drive winks when it has been unilaterally ejected, other times it goes out.

Best regards, T.

I had the same problem with an OWC drive. I went through extremely extensive troubleshooting with both Apple and OWC. Reinstalled the OS,uninstalled several applications, changed the FireWire 800 cables etc. No problem with the USB port but the FireWire issue continued until recently when it stopped. No idea why the issue resolved itself.

Is that a solid-state drive? Mine is not, and it is USB. I had a WD Firewire drive before that which failed in a week or two, and was replaced. I've not dared use the new one, but maybe I should start a whole fresh backup on that in case it works. Seems like a flaky area. My last two portable macs went down with their original drives in not much more than a year. My new MacBook Pro has a solid-state drive...

Any indication of what the basis of the trouble is - are we asking too much of 2.5" drives, is the OS flaky in this area, are the connectors not up to it?

... but the FireWire issue continued until recently when it stopped. No idea why the issue resolved itself.

How maddening!

Best, T.

Yes it is a solid state drive.The FireWire 800 port doesn't connect as securely as the the USB port but I don't know if that is a factor.

It was maddening.

Another odd issue is when not all of the partitions on an external FW drive mount, yet if I then launch Disk Utility they will mount. I have this issue with two other OWC drives. This makes even less sense.