Disk Not Ejected Properly -- AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN...

I have the same issue. I'm curious why repeated "solutions" given like cable, connections, power, etc when most users with similar complaints NEVER made any change in the setup/settings? I never had this happen before Ventura and now I'm with Sonoma, and the issue still exists.

as OP mentioned in one of their replies, I agree it's a software issue, not hardware and Apple needs to seriously look into this problem.

Noticed that some of Community members on this thread indicated the "Disk Not Ejected Properly" pop-ups never existed with Monterey... not in my case. Continue reading for a possible solution....

Purchased a 5 TB Lacie Rugged Thunderbolt USB-C drive in September 2023 to use solely for Time Machine for my 16" MacBook Pro. Just spent hours on the line with Apple tonight before discovering this thread.

The drive worked fine the first two times I used it to backup my system. Time Machine created one backup file on day one and 12 backup files on day 2. Thereafter, the drive hasn't worked properly since. I have received repeated issues when running Time Machine for backup. On two occasions, Time Machine stopped and issued a message "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to 'LaCie'. And then Time Machine indicated that a particular file couldn't be backed up. And Time Machine ceased to operate.

I removed the file from the system in Round 1 when the popup occurred, and then did the same for Round 2 when I received the same popup however with a different file name.

Rounds 3,4,5: No longer seeing the blame on a PDF file creating the issue. Next received "Disk Not Ejected Properly" pop-ups identical to those in this stream. And Time Machine would cease to run. The latest backup files were those from Days 1 and 2. Appeared that Time Machine would get to approximately 37% to 47% of its processes before it would cease and desist. The result? No backup file whatsoever. Also noticed that the Time Machine icon on the top bar of my display screen for Time Machine turned from a symbol in black font to a symbol in white font and then sometimes back again. (What's that about?)

Apple's Tech and I went into System Preferences and experimented by changing the screensaver timeout feature from 20 minutes to an hour. (Great Tech BTW.) FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE HAVING THESE ISSUES, I was able to backup 69% of my system (previously Time Machine only got to about 37% - 45%,) without the interruption of a "Disk Not Ejected Properly" and Time Machine failing to continue.

And then post Apple assist call, as the Time Machine backup percentage was continuing to climb to levels it hasn't seen since my run of failures, I went into preferences and decided to eliminate use of the screen saver altogether. (Opted for a solid color on desktop. ) Hey, when nothing else works, what's the saying? "Desperation becomes the mother of invention?" I'm desperate for a backup so that I can comfortably and securely without worry, update / upgrade my OS. I am still on Monterey.

Voila! Success! Time Machine reached 100% of its backup processes for the first time since these issues raised their ugly head. I was able to obtain a full Time Machine backup without experiencing another Time Machine mystery cease and desist and/or "Disk Not Ejected Properly" pop-up.

That tells me that some of the "hunches" around display timeout is most definitely linked to the issues reported in this Community stream. So folks, try eliminating use of your screen saver and see if that also eradicates all the "Disk Not Ejected Properly" pop-ups from your desktops.

Now for a note to Apple...

Apple, heads up. This is a critical issue. Apple protocol is to advise users to backup their systems prior to bringing in a MAC for a Genius appointment or for any software update or upgrade. If your users are incapable of completing a full Time Machine backup, imagine the problems that could become commonplace when users run into issues with updates and/or upgrades. Second, users will perform backups when converting over to your latest and greatest technology. Same concern. Imagine the user who telephones the Apple Care line with their new system (presuming he/she didn't use iCloud for the transition) and identifies the fact that files and folders are MIA and didn't come across in the conversion. Uggghhh! I certainly wouldn't want to be on that helpline call.

Apple sells LaCie drives. Apple sells MacBooks. Seems to me that this one is clearly in your wheelhouse. And I think our experimentation tonight provides a great head start for where to begin the debugging effort. Your help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Photos follow of a sample of the Round 1 error message (Round 2 error message was similar,) followed by the "Disk Not Ejected Properly" pop-ups so many others have reported to you.

Nice write-up Don, but I wouldn't accept that we have to wait until it is quietly fixed! We all pay thousands of $/euros for our Apple hardware and they owe us more than silence when an obvious OS bug appears in their System Software updates. This bug is so annoying, and like probably all of you, I return to my MacBook Pro M2 after being away for a day to find hundreds of Notification dialogs with this same message.

I used some help to write an Applescript that tries to automate the closure of the hundreds of Notifications, as they take up 20% of my very expensive (but lovely ;-) MacBook Pro screen, and although the script isn't perfect, the script has reduced my time to eradicate the notifications from 5 mins down to 30sec.

We shouldn't have to put up with something that Apple testing has undoubtedly seen...because you don't get 30-40 Mac users saying they have the exact same issue (as in this thread), without there being an issue. No disrespect to Kenneth, but if 30-40 M2 Macbook Pro users have the exact same OS issue, I would lay big money that we don't share the exact same "USB drive cabling errors".

Apple, please fix this, as I'm getting tired of cleaning this screen bug graffiti!

This blows my mind, this is the main problem with Apple products. It seems that their personal agendas for product marketing and development is more important than support. I have been a windows and mac user since the 80s. Say what you may say about Microsoft, but there is a legion of people ready to solve system issues. Yes they have a never ending line of issues but they are all due to them having a million different hardware systems they need to be compatible with VS Apple that they control every aspect of their hardware and software. Yet we have these issues and NO support or resolution. This issue has been happening for so long (years) that they clearly DGAF.

Every day I have to clear a legion of these notifications on the screen for a backup hard drive that has 0 issues, other than the Mac OS continuously causing these when I walk away. Everything is set to never go to sleep for the hard drives and even the computer/screen. Yet these persist, regardless of the settings or how much electricity I waste by leaving everything running 100% to make sure the backups run properly. Yet still! get back to the workstation with a long strip of notifications. No cable change or OS configuration I do will fix this issue.

Apple fix your OS. This is such an old issue. The fact that we are ****** is because eventually it gets old, that nothing gets done about it.

While is good data and expected/true, the problem is wide spread across many drive manufacturers. What has happened here is Apple set a precedent in pre-Venture OSes with sleep patterns and then it changed them. LaCIE, OWC, and other drives now exhibit this problem. A large part of the problem here is that Apple removed the ability to control sleep modes -- is Sonoma on a Mac Studio there are virtually no options to control this.

Rather this has to do with Apple changing sleep behaviors in the OS that do now work well with Thunderbolt connected NVME drives, which are not considered classic removable USB 'thumb drives' drives. Apple could address this with a fix by seeing what device is mounted and control sleep of that port accordingly. If PCI-EXPRESS, then do NOT sleep the power modes. If USB, then sleep aggressively.

I have had to resort to using an application called Amphetamine (was Caffeine) and set the 'Drive Alive' mode to prevent sleep. All the problems went away. It has nothing to do with 'frayed cables' or 'drives going bad'.

This 100% a Mac problem... With Sonoma, this is unbearable with ANY of my removable storage. Not a hardware problem as the hardware did not change.

Thanks to all of you for helpful advice....having same issue suddenly and getting worse. Hope Apple will acknowledge and fix the bug!

Working with a client on Sonoma of an M1 iMac. Same issue. Have followed advice all over Google, no joy.

I'm getting the same problem one year later. Macbook Pro M2 Sonoma 14.5. Despicable. All my external drives keep getting disconnected ALL THE TIME. I need to run a program from an external drive and just can't do it. Will this be fixed?

This is what worked for me.

OS is macOS Sonoma 15.4

SSD connected to USB-A port

I disabled the screen saver as suggested elsewhere but the error message kept popping up.

So I fired up Disk Utility, clicked on Time Machine on the left pane and then ran "First Aid".

It took a really long while, found no errors, but after that I have not seen the dreaded "disk not ejected properly" message.

Hope this helps.

Carlos

It's more than an annoying notation on the screen. I use external drives for Time Machine. Every time they are ejected, I have to unplug the drive and then reenter the password. This is annoying and probably hard on the drives. Please excuse the pun.

Apple, Please fix!

Interesting and helpful viewpoint. So it sounds like something is going wrong with the transition to (or perhaps from) sleep. That would be consistent with my observation that setting the drive not to sleep seems to stop the warning. That certainly could be a problem with the drive -- for example -- not reacting fast enough. What's interesting is that when I searched for "Drive Not Ejected Properly", it was not any single type of drive. In fact, I bought the Crucial SSdrive to replace a Seagate that failed after repeated Drive Not Ejected Properly warnings.

I wonder if the problem might be that that some part of the Ventura upgrade changed the process of triggering sleep enough to go beyond the tolerances of some drives which had worked with Monterey. That could cause the drives not to handle Sleep properly and cause the failures. Would that make switching off the sleep options a solution? Or at least a stopgap?

Thanks for your insight.

This has been happening to me after purchasing a new MacBook Pro a few months ago, replacing an old MacBook. Upgrade went more or less smoothly, except for couple relatively minor, expected glitches (MacOS on old MacBook was a few versions back).

I had been using a Synology NAS for backups on the old MacBook. Used the same setup for the new machine - the only exception being to switch to a different target directory on the NAS. This worked fine.

The ONLY issue I've had is to keep getting "Disk Not Ejected Properly" after every Time Machine backup - similar to what has been reported here (in particular, this started happening with Ventura (new OS version, but on a new laptop). The backup data on the NAS is OK, and tests show it's usable.

The main difference is I'm using a network connection (SMB). Obviously, my problem is not physical (like a flaky USB connection). Also, I typically do not see cascaded alerts after waking the laptop (e.g. next day) - I see only one alert, although there will have been multiple Time Machine runs since it went to sleep.

I agree this seems to be a MacOS problem, not hardware (nor network). I suspect it's some kind of timing issue in the logic which manages the post-backup disconnect.

Similar issue (although mine is not ejecting Time Machine except after LONG wait time) on brand new Mac Mini. Worked until latest update on Ventura. Safe mode works fine, but not in regular startup mode so I believe it's a Mac OS issue too. Similar issues with other daily backup drives that I switch out with Time Machine. Apple needs to fix this and stop blaming cords, drives and third party software. I will be going to Apple Store for them to troubleshoot, but I am not confident (as Mac user since 1990) that they will be able to "fix" the problem with the Mac OS.