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

Hi, I have a similar problem of the Disk not Ejected correctly & File copy stopping intermittently after Operating System Upgrade.

My File Copies are Long, at least a minimum of 30 minutes!

I have tried different external hard disks "HDs" and the problem still remains the same.

I am trying the Energy Saving Option where you can un-check the "Put Hard Disks to Sleep When Possible and will let you know.

Changing HDs not helping points to Op Sys or related issues rather than HD issues, in my opinion anyway.

Wish me luck!

I just got my Wd hard drive 2tb today and copied movies over to it and then the message came up saying it wasn't ejected properly. So I deleted the 2 applications you install and now it works perfectly.

Turn off Spotlight!  Apparently, Spotlight must hammer the external drive and cause all kinds of problems.  I turned off Spotlight for the external drive (added to the Privacy tab) and just transferred 34GB no problem.

Unfortunately this hasn't worked for me. Anyone have any other suggestions?

I have just had this problem since the 19th and I don't think anything has changed on my computer. Late 2013 3.5GHX Intel core i7 24dm RAM OSX 10.10.1 bought 6 months ago. Neither of my two Maxtor Desktop Basic 1.5 and 2 Tb external USB HDD will stay connected. I have bought new power supplies with uprated 5amp power output as I thought it could be the power supplies but it's not made any difference. Strange that both failed to stay connected at the same time. One is my time machine the other for large seldom used files

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

This problem seems to persist, so I'll throw in my 2¢

I have 4 externals attached to my Mac mini. 2 directly into the Mac, 2 into a hub.
The two connected to the Mac are a WD 640Gb and a Verbatim 1TB.

The two connected via the hub are a Seagate 1Tb and a Iomega 1Tb (the latter drive is manufactured by Samsung).

I have only one drive that has this self-ejecting problem. The Iomega. The others are fine. The Iomega WAS fine until about 3 weeks ago. I initially thought that it was something to do with upgrading to OSX 10.10 Yosemite but from the comments above/below that doesn't seem to hold.

The Verbatim and WD are both 3+ years old. The Iomega, 2 years old and the Seagate 1 year. The WD has been running almost constantly since it was installed. The other 3 are mounted when needed but the Iomega is used the second most.

I have no external software controlling these drives, only Mac's normal mount point. So I think that those that are saying it's the WD software are, unfortunately, probably wrong.

I have changed cables, PSUs (where possible) and plugged the drive into the Mac directly. I noted that the drive seems to play up toward the end of the day when it has been on for a number of hours. I have physically moved the drive thinking it may be a heat issue.

I have also noted that the drive behaves more erratically when there are a number of apps and processes running. Interestingly it has the most problems when I bring Skype to the front. I think that is coincidental but I can't explain why the drive should be more erratic when using skype.

The Iomega continues with it's self ejecting.

My gut instinct makes me think that it's a power issue, but I'm no techie.

Reading this thread there seem to be a few different makes of drive affected from various flavours of Mac OSX on various models of Macs.

I am inclined to think that it is a Mac issue not the drive.

I will be buying a new drive this weekend. The Iomega is my media drive and I'd hate to lose all my films, the more important music is backed up to the Seagate ;-)

Yes I have googled.

My Mac

Model Name:Mac mini (Mac mini 2011)

Model Identifier:Macmini5,1

Processor Name:Intel Core i5

Processor Speed:2,3 GHz

OSX 10.10.1

Below are some details of the Iomega drive. Please note that the other drives have the same spec as below, save for the manufacturers, BSD name, and that which you'd expect to be different for the differing drives.

Iomega 1Tb external drive (Samsung)

Available: 375,88 GB (375.881.838.592 bytes)

Capacity: 999,86 GB (999.860.912.128 bytes)

Mount Point: /Volumes/IOMEGA-1TB

File System: Journaled HFS+

Writable: Yes

Ignore Ownership: Yes

BSD Name: disk3s2

Physical Drive:

  Media Name: SAMSUNG HD105SI Media

  Protocol: USB

  Internal: No

  Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

  S.M.A.R.T. Status: Not Supported

I'm just shooting from the hip like everyone else here; I've not ever had a problem with the following hardware:

Transcend USB 3.0 Five USB Hub

WD My Book Studio 2TB Drive

Seagate Backup Plus 4TB Drive

My main computer is a Early 2013 MacBook Pro 15" Retina,  i7 2.7 / 16gb RAM

Never a problem. The ONLY time they've unmounted improperly is when we experience a power failure, even a quick drop of power that just lasts less than a second.

I've had older hardware that would unmount fairly frequently on Windows machines, but never gave it much thought; it was Windows. I did have some older externals on an older Mac that didn't like to stay mounted; I bought newer devices and everything worked. This leads me to think that these issues are possibly hardware compatibility issues on the aftermarket manufacturers' end. Whether it be hubs, or external drives. I bought everything 'latest and greatest' new with this latest Mac and like I'd said, I've had ZERO issues. Just my two cents.

"Utilities - Disk Uitilities - Select Macintosh HD - First Aid - Repair Disk Permissions"

This worked for me. Solved the problem of a 3TB Western Digital drive mounted on a Voyager that kept ejecting on my MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2008) 10.10.4

if you haven't solve it yet try getting rid of the wd utilities and restarting your mac , it solved it for me

Can you tell me how you went about removing WD's software from your Mac, what the title is or whether there is a driver somewhere?

i'm curious "grendel", did you just start dragging and dropping files without having installed the drive? and, if so, no problems?