External Hard Drive Randomly Ejects From MacBook Pro - "The Disk Was Not Ejected Properly"

benttop

• HDD Interface (USB/Firewire to Thunderbolt)
• HDD manufacturer (Seagate to G-Tech)
• HDD USB Driver (removed)

Any one of those could have been the culprit.

NONE of those is the culprit.

95% of the errors seen by those in this thread is due to ONE THING, a junky 50 cent SATA bridge/card in an external HD

External HD are insanely easy to diagnose (Ive got a 100 of them). Bad USB cable (on commercial sold USB drives) almost doesn’t exist anymore.

External USB HD have 4 'parts' (not counting the HD itself and its internals)

1. USB cable ....(never an issue anymore, approaching 100%)

2. HD enclosure.....a plastic or metal box which cannot ever be an issue.

3. the HD itself, in these issues, it accounts for less than 5% (however I recommend NOBODY buy a WD drive).

4. ....and last but not least is the epicenter of 'weak links' ,.....a SATA card/bridge that is connected to the HD inside the HD box, the size of a stick of gum, with SATA female on one side, and female USB on the other side, containing circuitry for data transfer between the SATA on the HD and to USB on the other.

While these bridge cards are better than they used to be, theyre still insanely unreliable.

There are literally probably MORE than 100,000 perfectly working external hard drives out there thrown away every year because people assume the "hard drive is bad"... when really they could crack open the HD enclosure, remove the HD and put the good HD into a new enclosure.

See this video of the SATA CARD, its at 8:55min.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pS_EDsP2KI

All HD external are nearly 100% like the video above.

See pic below,..a (much larger) SATA card as found inside a typical HD enclosure ($20 ebay)

This is the nasty critter pictured below causing all the "crazy" activity seen on external HD, very odd behaviour, some have called it "haunted hard drive syndrome". Random ejects, random strange vanishing of the HD , especially in mid transfer of data.

Heres a pic of 2 500gig hard drives pulled from macbook Pros I upgraded to 1TB

The problem part is the green SATA bridge card pictured lower left.

(this is a teardown of how most all external USB HD look inside, which is just a SATA card and the HD itself), ...the rest is just a box and USB cable.

not pictured is the USB cable, to the right is a HD dock, I highly recommend people with many hard drives own, without question.

The comment below was originally posted to the following thread that began back in 2008.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2151621?answerId=15544067022#15544067022. Why is this an ongoing issue?

Wow, can't believe what I'm reading here. But I should since the reason I found this thread is due to experiencing the exact same issues. I'm currently using OSX 10.6.8. Over the past month I've had numerous drive failures due to drives bing ejected without warning. One of the drives, a Drobo with 200,000 photos on it, ejected threes different times and thousands of images destroyed. I originally attributed it to using the Drobo via ISCSI but have since had three smaller external drives ejected AND RUINED. The smaller drives included one GTech firewire and two Western Digital USB 2.0. Ejected drives have happened with a MacBook Pro and MacPro computers. The latest dive I tried to repair via OSX Disk Utility. No luck. Then tried Data Rescue and each time Data REscue begins a scan, the drive ejects. I've not been able to even try and repair this drive due to ejecting. Not sure it's related to the original Eject problem or it's because the drive is now corrupted. This has got to be one of the most serious issues I've ever had with an Apple computer. Destroying data and drives is about as bad a problem as one can have.

This appears to be a duplicate of an older thread.

You will find that thread, and my summary of the problems identified so far with solutions here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2151621?answerId=15544501022#15544501022

To all on this thread (except R. Cooke, who has seen it all): please take a look on

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2151621

at my posts dated 7 May (under ID tingo@tanca), 12 May and 14 May, as well as my last confirming post on 29 June (which I can re-confirm today) to see how I was lucky enough to completely resolve this issue, even if it was a pain in the arse. While it might not be the solution for everyone, it certainly is worth a try.

Not that I don't believe you, but what about those of us who don't have, never had that WD stuff? To me it's still a interaction, an unhappy one at that, between hardware, software and connections (see my latest post in this respect: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2151621?answerId=19152554022#19152554022)

Glad you've got it solved, though.

To update the basis of the discussion, has anybody running Mavericks had the "improper rejection" problem with an energy saver setting of "enable power nap"? If so, what are the details?

I am involved in another discussion where I am urging more information about the "energy saver" settings and how they relate to external hard drives. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5812259.

I read about SMC reset here.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1703575

Apple directions here,

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964

It has worked so far. I would like to find others that have had positive results.

Some background:

3 weeks after Maverick update the improper ejection issue started. I did an Internet Rocovery to a Mini sold with Mountain Lion. Still no good, same ejection issue. After the SMC reset I Carbon Copy Cloned 14GB from HDD 1 to an external Seagate Freeagent Desk for Mac, no trouble. When I plugged in a second drive to the mini it was not recognized, I unplugged and am now "drag and drop" downloading 116GB from finder window to external Seagate Backup Plus for Mac.

What say you world of lost backups and grinding teeth.

Upodate:

Just found another thread which suggested doing a SMC and PRAM reset

iMac SMC and PRAM reset

After 3 hours all is still connected and have been able to do a time machine backup.

Hope this also helps others

Well after six days using a Thunderbolt drive instead of USB or Firewire, I have had exactly zero instances of the eject message. I'm not sure exactly what conclusions can be drawn since I changed several variables at the same time. By doing this switch, these are all of the variables at play:

• HDD Interface (USB/Firewire to Thunderbolt)
• HDD manufacturer (Seagate to G-Tech)
• HDD USB Driver (removed)

Any one of those could have been the culprit. Based on all of the reports I've read here and other threads, it really is a tossup, but I'm betting on the drivers being the main culprit based on the number of folks who have de-installed theirs and had success.

Seems mine's fixed. Good luck to those of you who are still seeing this issue.

I just purchased one of these tonight and started having the same continuous ejection issue as soon as I started trying to put files on it. I started copying a large folder of digital video when the error first occurred. Every couple of minutes I can see the drive icon go semi-transparent like it has been ejected. Then the following error message pops up requiring an "OK".

WD My Passport 0740 Media is in use and cannot be powered off.

Try quitting applications and try again. (OK button)

I have several portable drives and have never experienced an issue such as this. This is my first (and likely last) "WD Passport". I have seen the error reported here in the Apple discussions as well as WD support and other tech forums. So far I have not seen a reasonable explanation.

Computer:

Mac OSX Snow Leopard Version 10.6.8

Processor: 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Memory: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

External Hard Drive:

1TB WD My Passport Essential SE (WDBACX0010BBK-01)

Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

I am also having the same problem with a 1TB WD My Passport Essential SE I purchased this week.

Please let us know us know when you receive if the new cable they sent you fixes the issue, or if we will all have to contact WD for a hard drive replacement,

Hypnoguy might be on the right track. If your drive is a USB drive, plug it directly into your computer, not a USB hub. I have found that solves a lot of problems with USB devices, especially if the hub being used is an unpowered hub.