Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
Should i eject the external hard drive before shutting off my MacBook Pro? I have a reoccurring problem where backup hard drives (Seagate) become damaged and I am wondering if i need to eject the hard drives before shutting down the MacBook Pro to prevent it? Note that i always turn off my MacBook Pro from the Apple directory (top left corner of the screen).
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15
It is not absolutely necessary, once the mac has shut down the drive should shut down also.
But as an experiment eject the drives before shutting down and see if this stops the drives
from becoming damaged.
Have you installed any software that came with the drives, if you have it is not a good idea as
this interferes with the macs own management of the disks.
I have been shutting down Macs for years with rotational and SSD external Time Machine drives without having to manually eject the drives beforehand. No drives were corrupted, though I have had a couple of Seagate drives disconnect themselves while the operating system was running, or simply fail altogether. I no longer use Seagate drives for important content.
If you are doing Apple icon menu -> Shutdown, then no, as that shutdown sequence will dismount all mounted disks (external and network mounted).
If you are pulling the power, by holding the power button for 10 seconds, then that is bad for a mounted file system. Most disks will survive, but it is better to not yank power away.
Eau Rouge,
Thank you for your response. I have not installed the software that comes with the drives.
To date, i have only had problems with Seagate drives. I sometimes have more than 1 backup drive connected to a powered USB multiplier, and i have noticed that even when i use the software off command (under the Apple menu) that the drives may still be running as they are still powered by the power coming from the powered USB extender.
What happens is that everything will work fine for months, sometimes even many months, and then all of a sudden a drive will fail. If the problem is the drive, it is unrepairable, but sometimes i have to erase and re encrypt the drive which can take more than a week for an 8 GB drive to fully encrypt.
Once in a while, i think due to the backup drives, the computer will not shut off and i have to use the hardware switch to turn off the computer.
I hope that the additional details help.
Viking OSX and BobHarris, thank you also for your replies. All of the help is very much appreciated.
Should i eject the external hard drive before shutting off my MacBook Pro?
