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

Computer: MacBook Pro (13-inch, M1, 2020)

OS: macOS Big Sur 11.0.1


External Hardware involved:

- OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad RAID 4-Bay (USB 3.1 Gen 2 cable) (4 hard drives, 2 volumes, both mirrored) (RAID is brand new, drives are less than a year old)

- OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock (brand new)


Problem:

I'm having an issue with hard drives being ejected randomly on my mac. While the computer is unused, I'm assuming during sleeping, my hard drive is being ejected improperly. I get several of the "Disk Not Ejected Properly" notifications whenever I come back to my computer if I leave it overnight. It's happening every 3-4 hours, sometimes more. (See photo of notifications for more info)


I've confirmed that the issue only happens whenever the hard drive is connected to the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock. When the drives are connected directly to the computer, it doesn't have the ejection issue at all. I need to use a dock because the computer only has 2 ports and I have several peripherals to connect to the computer.


The OWC dock is brand new and worked fine with the old Macbook Pro. The hard drive enclosure is maybe 2 months old, and the drives should still have plenty of life left. I initialized and verified all of the drives before creating the RAID arrays.


Solutions Tried:

I've tried unchecking the "Put disks to sleep whenever possible" checkbox and that didn't help. My assumption is that it has something to do with Apple's "Power Nap" feature, I heard there were changes with it on the new M1 Macs, but I don't really know. Anyone have any thoughts? I'm really not sure what to try at this point. I have another dock on the way that I'm hoping will fix the issue.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Nov 30, 2020 7:05 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 10, 2021 11:49 PM

I was having the same issues on an M1 MacMini with a OWC ThunderBay Flex 8. I followed what others have said in this thread and still the drives would just unexpectedly disconnect/disk not eject properly. I did the following ' I set the slider for "Turn Off Display" to never and checked "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off". ' and so far after 48 hours I have not had a single drive report "unexpectedly disconnect/disk not eject properly".

I am not sure if this will work for everybody but so far it has worked for me.

Similar questions

41 replies

Jun 1, 2021 5:55 AM in response to dim7chord

Ive had issues with the qwc 14 port tb3 dock , with The M1 as we'll, the best answer I got was do a power cycle ,

I gave up on the owc dock and got a ankle thunderbolt power extend , It has a power on/off button and I haven't had a issue

I also have a Owc thunder bay T/B 2 , if I daisy chain it , I get Kernel panic , I had a logic board replaced under apple warranty ,

I did not get any definitive answer , Ive posted here , gone to genius bar , and talked to support a number of times, the crash reports talk permissions . and there is talk that going to security permissions , and decreasing the security protocols ,help ,

also clean my Mac x and setup app , which I used to run where , pointed out as malware to me , no answer to the version on the apple store , I only use malware bites now, and Iam documenting every crash report now with apple , and Ive been goin to the Genius Bar as well, to learn, I have a feeling that as apple starts updating things will change for the better , but its a bit frustrating , that at less then 6 months logic board is replaced , It probably bad from start as the Touch Bar didn't act as I thought it should, and when the machine came back from apple , I was happy to see that it did what was expected , I was thinking it was me , that I was not understanding , I will not proclaim to be tech guru , used computers all my life , know when somethings off, not necessarily why.

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

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

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.