M1 MacBook Pro "Disk Not Ejected Properly" several times during sleep

This whole eject-gate thing is getting ridiculous. Today I didn't even have my external plugged in and when I opened my MacBook I got ten Eject Errors. Apple PLEASE do something:

• At least let us turn off eject notifications.
• AND dismiss multiple notifications at once and not one at a time.

I solved that same issue by unchecking the "Put disks to sleep whenever possible" checkbox in the Battery setting in the tab of "Battery" and also in "Power Adapter".

MacBook Air (M1, 2020)

My MacOS is Big Sur 11.1

PS: I've only tried this with a power adapter connected and did not had any more problems, I don't know if I'll have an issue without it. For now all good, I'll keep you posted!

Good luck, hope that helps...

> your solution isn't even a good workaround

It's an excellent workaround for anyone with an M1 machine with a relatively low-capacity internal SSD, and a single high-capacity TB3 SSD. Given the currently-available prices and configurations of M1 machines, that's likely many people.

> it's almost ridiculously simplistic: "if I boot from my external USB drive, it won't disconnect." Bravo!

No. There are many possible causes of this issue, which could have prevented a boot. It's silly to assume that one could boot reliably from a disk, which is throwing errors, until you try it. I tried it, and I'm reporting the results. The results eliminate some possible roots causes, and also provide a useful workaround for some folks.

> Now what if I have several external drives?

You can work on that one. I've suggested a useful workaround for the single-drive case.

> It's inconvenient (to say the least) to install a whole system on an external hard disk

It depends on your skill level. I posted step-by-step instructions above. You can decide how inconvenient it is for you. You can also decide which is more inconvenient: installing a system on your SSD, or using it as a doorstop (which is the question which really matters).

> it's well known that M1 Macs have problems booting from external drives.

I reported my results above: My M1 Mac has been booting off my external TB3 VisionTekSSD for about 2 months with no problem. The measured r/w speed is about 10% better than the internal SSD.

I think we're done, have a nice day!

This is happening to me with the same hardware, Mac OS Big Sur 11.1, with external USB SSD drives connected to a CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 dock. The exact same configuration did NOT result in improper ejects when connected to a MacBook Pro 15" 2018 also running Big Sur 11.1!

Thanks! Under "power adapter" it's not there either but if it didn't help for you, I'll try the other.

To make this happen, can you tell me where to go to switch it? making the Thunderbolt SSD my startup disk

The problem has, at least temporarily, stopped for me. Rebooting seems to help. @Venkatfromdxb, do you have a T3 dock?

I know that @dim7chord found that unchecking the "Put disks to sleep whenever possible" checkbox didn't do anything, but I've unchecked it (why does this preference still exist?). Not sure whether it has had any effect whatsoever, though.

Many thanks for the quick reply . just bought it should receive it . Where is the put disks to sleep whenever possible option ? will try that too. While I bought the cal digit for convenience & expansion, But why do we have to buy an external piece of hardware to make the laptop work as it should . Apple should really look at this - this is a flagship model

I think I cracked the problem - in Big Sur - there is no energy saving tab , but there is a battery option in the system preferences & change the "turn display off after "from the 1 minute or so default to say 1 hour . Its not disconnected for the last half hour at least. Will update if it stays that way

Check the options under ”power adapter”?

In any event, the “put hard disk to sleep when possible” option didn’t resolve the issue for me.

What resolved it for me, was making the Thunderbolt SSD my startup disk. Perhaps this keeps it sufficiently active to prevent a timeout of some kind that’s occurring when it’s used as a secondary disk.

In my system, the performance of the external (boot) SSD matches the performance of the internal SSD within 5%, so I don’t mind booting from it.

Mac mini M1 2020 / MacOS Big Sur 11.2 beta / VisionTek 1TB Thunderbolt 3 Portable External SSD

Sure.

You can choose to boot from any internal or external disk which has MacOS on it. This is where you select your boot disk: System Preferences > Startup Disk.

Below is a tutorial for installing the MacOS version of your choice, on the disk of your choice.

Hope this helps.

https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/macos-external-drive-3659666/

Same problem on my M1 Mac Mini, but only since I upgraded to 11.2.1 last night - and after a long phone session with Customer Support (despite their best suggestions and a complete reinstall of the system software) the problem remains.

So...

New (about 2 month old) Mini with and external 1TB SSD with 2 partitions plugged into a Thunderbolt port. 1 partition, containing my various documents, photos, etc. always mounted and visible on the desktop. The other, empty in anticipation of eventually having a bootable clone drive, always unmounted.

Until last night, there were only 2 occasions when I got the "Disk Not Ejected Properly" notice, and on both those occasions the monitor hadn't woken from sleep either, so I assumed the problems were related. (Also, possibly related, about one time in 10 or 20, when I choose Sleep from the Apple menu, it immediately wakes back up, and I have to put it to sleep a second time. This hasn't changed after the update.)

So anyway, after the update last night, EVERY time I put the mini to sleep it dumps the external drive, but here's the interesting thing. With only one of the partitions mounted before sleep, when I get and close the 'not ejected properly' notice on waking, but do NOTHING to remount the partition, after about a minute, the Mini goes out and remounts both partitions by itself. I found this interesting, so then tried unmounting both partitions of the 1TB drive (but kept it connected), but plugging in an external 256GB into another slot, and leaving it mounted while I put the computer to sleep. On waking, I get the notice about the 256GB drive, do nothing, and the Mini tracks down and mounts BOTH external drives (both partitions of the 1TB and the 256 GB).

So it somehow appears that if the external drive wasn't deliberately ejected before sleep, the computer 'knows(?)' something went wrong, and goes out polling its ports for connected drives. Perhaps that might provide a clue as to what's going on.

Additionally, during the time with Customer Service, it was suggested to me a couple of times that a recommended preventative was to connect the drive to external power. I explained that these external drives A) are solid state, so don't need to be keeping disks spinning during sleep, and B) don't have anywhere to plug external power into anyway. Plus, given that the only variable between the computer working till last night and not working now, is the new system update - so there has to be something in the software causing this.

I'm also wondering if there's something in the code to dump external drives during sleep to preserve the batteries of laptops, but it's not taking into account that that's not necessary for a plugged-in desktop unit.

Anyway, open for suggestions - and if there's a specific place where it would be useful to submit these details to Apple for their bug solvers to peruse, let me know and I'll send it in there too.

Thanks,

Update on my previous reply to someone on this thread:

I can confirm that this likely MacOS bug resolved for me, after I started using the external TB3 SSD as a boot drive.

As a non-boot drive, I got uncommanded disk ejection about every 20 seconds. Using it as boot drive, I’ve had zero ejections in 2 months.

My theory is that using it for boot, keeps something from timing out. Perhaps swap or some other process keeps the SSD sufficiently active.

I'm hoping that before too long SuperDuper and/or Carbon Copy Cloner will be able to make bootable clones for computers with the M1 chips. (I've always had cloned backups of my hard drives and won't feel REALLY relaxed until I'm able to do it with this one as well.) But if the problem still persists when that day comes, I'll give it a try - any reductions in response time wouldn't be a deal breaker for me in the way I use my computers.

Thanks

It's not a fix. It's a workaround for anyone (like me) who needs to use their external TB3 SSD while waiting for a fix.

It's also the results of an experiment, which a) tends to rule out compatibility issues as the root cause, and b) supports the theory that this is an OS bug.

This thread is about M1 machines. Every M1 machine can run Big Sur.

> Not everyone's external hard drive is bootable

False. Every external HD supported by Big Sur is bootable.

> it's very inconvenient to boot

False. It's unsupervised. Just select your boot disk: System Preferences > Startup Disk

This forum is for problem-solving. If you have the expertise to make useful suggestions, please make them. Otherwise, you're not adding value.