Initially Time Machine was working fine. Now it keeps ejecting itself from my computer USB port. I have tried different ports, rebooting and I still get the message that it has been ejected incorrectly. This seem to be a common problem in previous OSs too and I’ve see similar questions from 10 years ago. Surely someone has figured this out by now.
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 14.1
Ian0071 wrote:
Initially Time Machine was working fine. Now it keeps ejecting itself from my computer USB port. I have tried different ports, rebooting and I still get the message that it has been ejected incorrectly.
All external drives or this one drive in particular...?
Do you have another drive to test ...
Are you manually ejecting,
or you are trying to say it spontaneously self-ejects repeatedly?
Time Machine issues—
"Time Machine has completed a new backup for you"
"it can't create the backup,"
“failed to complete the backup, ”
“Preparing backup”
It is known that if any of these message appear repeatedly the Time Machine drive is most likely operating in a state of failure. The known answer is to to replace the drive.
Time Machine troubleshooting on Mac
Time Machine troubleshooting on Mac - Apple Support
Ian0071 wrote:
Initially Time Machine was working fine. Now it keeps ejecting itself from my computer USB port. I have tried different ports, rebooting and I still get the message that it has been ejected incorrectly.
All external drives or this one drive in particular...?
Do you have another drive to test ...
Are you manually ejecting,
or you are trying to say it spontaneously self-ejects repeatedly?
Time Machine issues—
"Time Machine has completed a new backup for you"
"it can't create the backup,"
“failed to complete the backup, ”
“Preparing backup”
It is known that if any of these message appear repeatedly the Time Machine drive is most likely operating in a state of failure. The known answer is to to replace the drive.
Time Machine troubleshooting on Mac
Time Machine troubleshooting on Mac - Apple Support
Thanks @leroydouglas
I have 3 x TM external hard drives at 1 TB each. All 3 were saying the TM was full and did not have enough space. So I erased one of the TM drives and started a fresh back up. I started yesterday afternoon, and everytime I leave the machine running for a while without checking it ejects saying something along the lines like: TM was improperly ejected. I then reconnect and continue the back up. Same thing happened overnight with about 5 messages saying the same thing. I have ejected the disk and reconnected it again and continued back up (currently 79% complete). Am a little worried the back up will be corrupted with these constant ejections.
* in bold * are the 2 problems I’ve been experiencing a while with TM
I started having the same problem today. I have two LaCie drives, one for photos and movies, the other for backup. Time Machine had been flawlessly backing up both my computer hard drive and external drive with photos onto the back up drive. Both LaCie drives have TBs of storage after back up and are working well. I plan to make an appointment at the Apple Store to see if they have insights. Based upon what I've read here, Time Machine has issues - maybe it somehow associated with updating the operating system?
My WD Passport Air 1 TB external dedicated Time Machine drive on 2022 MAC M1 was working fine until I installed Sonoma 14.0. My external drive kept ejecting; about once every 5 to 10 Backups. Same for version 14.1 and 14.2. My other external drive (Seagate 1TB drive) was also being ejected but not as often. Both backups were taking 1 to 2 hours to complete the backup. Since I had a good backup, I removed the Passport drive from Time Machine, re-formatted it. I upgraded to version 14.3.1 and a initial full backup of 300GB took about 90 minutes and subsequent incfemental backups now only take 10 to 15 minutes; but I'm still getting that drive ejected after 3 to 5 backups. Any ideas?
Time Machine keeps ejecting itself while backing up
