time machine keeps ejecting my backup disk during backup, 2023

Question

time machine keeps ejecting my backup disk during backup, 2023

Like many of the folks at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253787606?login=true, there was a time when our Time Machine backups worked fine.

Problems started happening with a Western Digital drive, so we decided "Western Digital is garbage, so we'll use Seagate, which has always worked for us".

That served us well.

LaCie was bought by Seagate, and those drives seemed to work well also.

Another thing about the Western Digital on the MacBook Air is our son kept unplugging the drive without ejecting it.

"Son, don't do that. MacOS can't find the backup drive after you do that".

After a couple of MacOS iterations with complete success on our other MacBooks, and intermittent success on the MacBook Air with our son playing by the rules, we find ourselves with all 3 MacBooks having issues finding and maintaining connection to the Time Machine backup drives.

None of the drives have a power source save that provided by the USB-C port.

Anyone else have this issue?

Anyone have a solution?

One of the posters at time machine keeps ejecting my backup dis… - Apple Community suggested it is a power issue, but we don't want to go out and buy 3, or even 1, new drives with power sources (AC plug) to find that is no more reliable than what we have.

As tagged, this problem seemed to start affecting all our MacBooks after we upgraded to MacOS Sonoma.

Thanks!

MacBook Air 13″

Posted on Oct 13, 2023 6:10 AM

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Answer 1

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Barney-15E

Level 10

122,042 points

Oct 16, 2023 5:34 AM in response to ronnie_and_sandy

Do you have a desktop Mac? You can share the drives from that and backup wirelessly to the drives connected to that Mac.

All bus-powered drives will eventually begin drawing more current as they get older. That overcurrent causes the bus to shut down, effectively ejecting the drive. Good drives, like LaCie and OWC, will last much longer and may even provide overcurrent protection. I think they are just made better so don't wear as quickly.

In a previous job we used bus-powered drives extensively, primarily on cheap PCs. The drives would eventually stop mounting due to overcurrent issues. On a PC box, it was sometimes possible to switch USB ports to the back of the box. Those seemed more resistant to the overcurrent issue.

I don't think an SSD would have the same issue, but they would be more expensive than replacing with powered HDD's.

You might be able to get a Y-cable to connect the drives. It worked on USB-A. The cable has two ends that connect to the computer, one provides power only and the other is the data stream. It takes up two ports, but seems to keep the drive powered and mounted.

I tried to find some and only found USB-A ones. Maybe a Dock would solve the problem without a Y-cable. Ones that work well with a Mac seem difficult to find. I've got an old one called Hyper++Drive. It has two USB-C connectors that plug into the two ports on one side of the Mac. It worked great with a four-port MacBook Pro, but on my new M2 MBP, the only side with two USB ports is the same side as Power and blocks the MagSafe power input.

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Answer 2

Oct 20, 2023 5:42 AM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks Barney!

It's been awhile since we looked at a desktop Mac, but when we looked at replacements for our outdated iMac, we opted for a MacBook, which was a fraction of the cost of Cheese Grater II, and suited our purpose better than a desktop (including iMac) anyhow.

None of our drives are particularly old, but your explanation makes sense. I hear the HDD grind often, and that moving part likely requires more power than the USB-C port has to give.

SSD is probably the way to go for us. However, for me, backup drives are a hard sell to the rest of the family anyhow, and I'll have to figure out a way to justify the cost and the "headache" of backing up

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