External Drives STILL ejecting during sleep in Ventura

Just updated to Ventura on a Mac Studio and I noticed that I still have the issue of my external HD disconnecting when the computer goes to sleep. I know this because I get the “disk not ejected properly” message when I wake the computer.


I suppose my question is this, are we EVER going to get a fix to this long-standing problem? This has been a bug I have dealt with on multiple macs, multiple external drives, and every version of MacOS for at least the last decade. It seems like something Apple should be able to fix, and yet, every time I upgrade to the latest OS I have the smallest hope that this issue might have finally been resolved. Every time I am disappointed to see that it persists. I’m far from the only person with this issue, and it is not a specific machine or OS causing the issue, it is every mac I’ve ever had and every version of MacOS.


Please, DO NOT suggest an “SMC reset”, “failing HD cables”, “reinstalling MacOS” or any of the other useless recommendations that serve no purpose other than to send people on a quixotic and time-consuming quest. This is a well known, well-documented , longstanding bug. This is clearly a problem that Apple needs to address and I’m finally annoyed enough to post about it after yet another year of the latest OS failing to address it.


The Mac Studio wasn’t cheap, and part of the expectation a person has around what is supposed to be a powerful, desktop workstation would obviously be that— given its intention as a professional workstation— that it isn’t ejecting external drives just because it needs a nap. Before you ask, yes, the behavior continues even if you turn off “put hard drives to sleep when possible” in the energy saving preferences. The only solution is a third party app like Jettison or to set your energy savings so that the computer never sleeps.


I just want to know if Apple has ever addressed this in any official capacity and if a fix is ever coming for this? The fact that there’s a market for third party apps that have to exist to try and mitigate this long-standing bug should be kind of embarrassing. I don’t get it, you can create your own processors that exceeded everybody’s expectations while running cool to the touch but you can’t get harddrives to stop ejecting? That seems odd. Does Apple plan on addressing this? Have they ever said anything about this at all? If anybody knows, I’d appreciate it.

Mac Studio, macOS 13.0

Posted on Oct 27, 2022 12:35 AM

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Posted on Feb 17, 2023 11:05 AM

I've posted here a number of times, with both questions and potential solutions, but until now nothing I've tried has worked, until... drum role; I've finally solved mine without any changes to default macOS settings. My eject drives problem has been with me from Mountain Lion up to and including High Sierra. Here is what has worked for me and why I believe it can be replicated.


First, have y'all noticed that Apple has never, and I mean never sold an Apple-branded USB hub? They now sell several third-party hubs but attach a disclaimer that all warranty or trouble claims must be submitted to the makers of those hubs. Translation in plain English; they know they have a problem with USB and the fix in either the firmware or the OS is not worth the dime to corporate Apple, especially since they have a story they can lay on you if you have a USB problem, to wit: SMC and/or NVRAM reset.


The problem I believe is a race condition between arrival of a wake up signal and the distribution and initialization of 5v dc over USB. It appears random because it is, because it cannot be duplicated: there is no way to resolve this to properly initialize 5v dc over USB without a significant engineering investment, and since Apple does not own USB, the way they do Firewire and Thunderbolt, why bother?


My problem was having two external drive enclosures on a 7-port USB hub. The hub was connected to a direct port on the machine. When the eject problem occurred, both of these drives always ejected, not just one but both, always both (actually 4, since both drives have 2 partitions.) Meanwhile, a RAID enclosure with its own power supply also connected to USB, but on the other direct USB port on my MBP, never ejected. I discussed this problem with technical support at both the hub and enclosure manufacturers and got conflicting advice. One said never put more than one enclosure on any hub, the other said never put even one enclosure on any hub even though they sell a 5v dc adapter for their enclosure. Their message; attach their enclosure with its own 5v dc source directly to the machine. Reading between the lines; this is subtle finger pointing, certainly implying the problem is Apple's. So I ran my own experiments.


First, I moved one of those drive enclosures to an open direct Firewire port. Voilà, this drive now never ejects while the one still on the hub did, at least once every 2 or 3 days. Remember, for me macOS has only default settings and sleep, if done correctly, is welcome. This is the only fair way to test macOS since it is valuable to permit drives to sleep on a system that is always on.


Next, I added a dedicated 5v dc power adapter to the drive enclosure. The hub itself has its own dedicated supply. Result, now neither of my two external drives eject. Going into my third week without a reboot and with no spurious ejects.


Conclusion: Apple has a latent bug in the hardware/firmware/software implementation of 5v over USB. Don't expect a solution anytime soon from Apple since we know the problem is present in all versions of macOS from at least Mountain Lion to Ventura, even in non-Intel machines given the comments on this site.



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127 replies

Jun 9, 2024 8:14 AM in response to KJH1986

I seem to be suffering with this problem as well on a 2000 27" iMac with an external Acasis 40Gbps M.2 NVMe Thunderbolt 3 SSD Drive.


I was advised to try another TB4 cable. Reading this thread at least has saved me the £25 a new TB cable would have cost...


'Amphetamine' works nicely to prevent my Mac going to sleep - no more with problems with the disc being ejected inappropriately.


If I simultaneously press the CTRL, Shift and Eject buttons my screen goes to sleep.


That's the best solution I have found so far.

Dec 11, 2022 9:37 AM in response to cmaring

Here’s the thing:


When the machine goes to sleep; external drives will be ejected.


So there are two approaches macOS could take:


1) Have the OS eject all externals before going to sleep. This is perhaps the safest approach rather than complain that the drives were improperly ejected, but the OS would need to try and auto mount the drives again upon awakening.


2) Don’t sleep the machine if there are external drives mounted. This is perhaps the more obvious thing to do, but it’s inevitable people would complain their devices aren’t sleeping when idle.


It’s unclear which approach is better, though I can certainly see people complaining that their laptops won’t sleep because they forgot they had a USB key mounted.

Jan 13, 2023 6:37 AM in response to tbirdvet

Here is what I found in Ventura, as per your request to look.


System preferences/Displays/Advanced

Under battery & Energy

There is a statement: "Prevent automatic sleeping on the power adapter when the display is off" Not sure if this has anything to do with the problem.


I have found now that I repeatedly receive the Disk Not Ejected Properly, every few minutes now for both external drives. This is most irritating. This has been happening now for two days.


Message:

"Disk Not Ejected Properly" Eject "DriveName" before disconnecting or turning it off. This message is automatic, I have tried everything I know, but so far unable to stop it.


Apple should be taking responsibility for such situations. Unforteunately customer support has in the past not been very helpful with other situations, but I will be attempting to use them again.


Jan 30, 2023 12:24 PM in response to Dogcow-Moof

BTW: Just to be clear on something: the problem often manifests itself (becomes apparent to you) when the machine is awakened from sleep, so it is logical to think it is sleep-related, but on occasion over the years I've had disks eject when the machine is awake and I'm actively using it. I've never drawn any conclusive connection between what I was doing at the time and the ejection, since I could never repeat the problem, but now I am very suspicious of that track pad interface, perhaps even some esoteric keystroke combination, particulary because none of the highly technical solutions offered by Apple or the community have solved the problem. Apparently random software problems, which are never really random, are the hardest to troubleshoot unless they can be duplicated.

Jan 31, 2023 3:41 PM in response to perlboy_emeritus

It seems that this thread has gotten busy in my absence. I looked at your posts and I’ll have to experiment to be sure, but I don’t believe the trackpad to be the issue. I say this because while I do have a magic trackpad 2, I had this same issue on my Macbook Pro and I had a magic mouse at that time which I’ve since abandoned because of it’s awful ergonomics. That Macbook Pro was almost always in clamshell mode on my desk so it’s own trackpad wasn’t used to wake it.


As of now, I generally use a mouse jiggle, trackpad click, or the spacebar so I’ll make a conscious effort to not use the trackpad and see if it makes a difference.


My setup is the Mac Studio w/input devices: a Wacom Intuos Pro, a Wacom Cintiq as second monitor, Logitech G-502 mouse, Apple Magic Trackpad 2, Apple Magic Keyboard with number pad.


I have a monitor connected via thunderbolt and a cintiq hooked up via HDMI. I have an audio interface with two XLR microphones, Studio monitor speakers, and two pairs of headphones hooked up. I have two powered hubs but I’ve had the issue even when drives are connected directly.


I hope this information about my setup is helpful.

Feb 1, 2023 8:21 AM in response to perlboy_emeritus

Spoiler alert: alas, my theory that track-pad events were causing ejects is not valid. This A.M. 4 of my 7 external drives, one an SSD, the other a mechanical, were ejected when I awakened the machine. So, back to the drawing board. Does anyone know the exact log file that High Sierra writes when such events occur? Since only 4 drives were ejected I intend to focus on their enclosures (USB bus powered) and initiate a new dialogue with vendor (Other World Computing). Interestingly, both drives participated last night in uneventful backup events, which means CCC woke the machine, then woke the drives (each drive has two partitions, thus 4 logicals), performed the backups and then, after backups finished, the machine returned to sleep. I smell a big Apple rat, er bug, or some timing issue with the enclosures' power management circuit in conflict with an OS wake up signal. Logically, any cached data should have flushed before backup, so probably no loss of data. Nothing more tragic than powering off a sleeping drive, but still very annoying.

Feb 16, 2023 1:12 PM in response to Pinzman

Tried this setting with 13.1, and yes, no drives were ejected. But I had a t least one incident where an external drive was not properly mounted (drive was visible on the io-port).

Now on drive eject issues - what has the setting from above to do with drive ejects? Regardless of being connected to a power adapter or not, my MBP did eject drives.

I might turn that setting off, just to see if the issue appears again. And hope it does get resolved by Turing the setting on again ;)

Mar 9, 2023 1:36 PM in response to perlboy_emeritus

perlboy_emeritus, I agree with you that Apple is not user-friendly with any other product not made by them. I have had my own story about Apple.


They are even challenged with supporting customers with Apple products.


They have some internal procedures and policies that are not even logical, like when I was locked out of a recently purchased Apple laptop being the first owner, and fully registered for Customer Care support. They were not allowed to grant me access to my computer, even with them fully aware of who I was and all the details. Even the supervisor, nope... Apple policy and procedures--wait two or more weeks. A computer system randomly decides this. I had a hard time believing that.


What I did to solve my problem is to take the two external drives over to my Linux computer and checked the hard drives, to clean things up and both work now on my Mac laptop. Plus, I no longer leave them on or attached until needed.



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External Drives STILL ejecting during sleep in Ventura

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