Why am I getting a disk not ejected properly message?

I am going to take a stab at this. I am having the same problem, but I only have it when both my firewire drives are hooked up to my thunderbolt display (one via firewire, and one via firewire-thunderbold adaptor. If both are plugged in I have the issue. If I unplug one cable and plug it into my laptop, I never have the issue. I am starting to think the thunderbolt display just can't power both drives.

Hmm, i use the usb port for my lacie drive, though I do have my cintiq plugged into the thunderbolt port. I could try unplugging the cintiq but it doesn't make much sense to me for these computers to not be able to support the number of ports physically present. Also, the lacie drive has its own power supply.l

Just to update everyone, I am no longer getting this message. But it took completely replacing both USB ports to accomplish it. The logic board was also replaced, although I was not experiencing problems, but this may also be a contributing factor.

This stream has gone rather quiet. Has the the problem been identified and sorted (and I missed it). Has it gone away (mine seems to be becoming more intermittent – but I suspect that might be a positive side effect of my Time Machine backup to an AirPort Time Capsule playing up!). Or is everybody just exhausted and hoping it will be sorted in Yosemite?

Still not gone away for me!!

I think I tried just about everything (new cables / USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, disk utility/preferences etc etc) except taking it back to Apple. I've got a 27" iMac and it's a fair weight along with all the hard drives & cables so carrying it to my car then ½ a mile to the shop has put me off.

I attempted to get online/'phone help using my Applecare but, it seems, in the UK this service has to be paid for !!! as I can't get past that stage online.

Hopefully Yosemite will help but I haven't, yet, loaded it.

Has anyone tried it with any success?

From my perspective it makes Time Machine useless as I can't trust it (have needed to reformat drives several times although, currently, not for a few months).

I'd, sort of, left the discussion through tech fatigue but do look back occasionally.

I presume Apple remain uninterested!

I am thinking Ataynay might have gone the right direction on this one, it being a hardware issue? I unfortunately use my computer all the time and cannot send it in, and that would also mean backing up everything before I ship it off.. I think it's rotten you have to pay extra on top of having already paid for applecare. Isn't that the point of applecare??

I am also not holding my breath with Yosemite. I forget if it was this problem or another one that I had (yes, I have MULTIPLE problems with my brand new 27" imac), but someone commented Yosemite did not fix it. I also hear yosemite is ugly to boot and takes an adjustment period to get used to since some mechanics have been changed, so I'm not willing to jump on board just yet. :/

And yes, what is the deal Apple? You have these forums up just to let customers sort things out themselves? Hellooo....

If what happened to my laptop is typical, and it's because the USB ports are failing, then wouldn't Apple need to take notice of the problem? Too late for me to get my $1450 back, but maybe then you all could get repairs under warranty.

Oh, and yes, that is the only purpose of these forums. When Apple tech support told me that they'd never heard of this problem before I asked them how they couldn't know, there are hundreds of posts in the Apple Forums about it. And tech support told me that the company doesn't pay attention to the forums, they're just an echo chamber as far as Apple is concerned. Basically - they want to offer tech support without actually having to pay for the manpower needed to fix problems, so they are dumping it all on the users.

Interestingly I have now got Yosemite. Haven't fully tested yet so the error hasn't been obvious yet (hasn't slept yet).

However - I wanted to dim the screen while awaiting some downloads/updates etc and my 2 hard drives both ejected with the error message when I dimmed the monitor. This only happened when I dimmed to the last stage (dot). As the problem, for me , has always seemed related to the screen sleeping phase I wonder if we've been looking in the wrong place for solutions? Anyone else able to test this?

Further update - Yosemite has made no difference at all to the issue.

Perhaps I will have to carry all my gear into a shop after all !!!

Try turning off Spotlight for those external disks. As far as I can observe so far it helped in my case.

Here's the original post I've found that tip: Yosemite ejects external drives

OK, I found a fix that works for me and I bet it works for others. Here's the quick answer...

If your external drive is plugged into a surge protector with battery back up... plug the external drive into an outlet that doesn't have the battery back-up.That's it. That's the fix.

Here's a little more detail in case my answer wasn't clear...

I have an APC surge protector with battery back-up. It has a total of 8 outlets. 4 of the outlets are for surge protection only (and don't provide battery back-up). The other 4, in addition to surge protection, also provide battery back-up if the power goes out.

I just spent 15 minutes turning my computer on and off and switching plugging in my external drive from surge protection only to surge protection + battery back-up. Every time it was in a battery backed-up outlet, it would eject itself when I turned on the computer. But, every single times I plugged it into surge protection only (with no back-up) no problem!

I have no clue why that is. Maybe an electrician or battery expert can chime in.

Earlier in this thread, someone had mentioned he thought it had something to do with the electrical current. That's what led me to trying the different outlets. So whoever first brought that thought up...THANKS!

James,

That IS a novel solution. I can't imagine why that would be the source, but I'll try anything.

I don't know whether this will be any help at all, but by fluke I found something today which may explain this message. I have never had it with my new macbook pro, (although I did get it regularly with my old macbook air) Anyway, I was having problems with pages taking ages to load, and someone suggested adding a Google DNS server to my server list - I think one was 8.8.8.8. and there was another one as well. It didn't sort out the problem I was having, but when I connected my hard drive to do my daily backup, sure enough, there was the message, which kept on popping up, so I couldn't back up. I removed the added DNS servers, and have had no problem since. Backup was fine.

Maybe it was coincidence, but I thought I'd put in my two halfpence worth - it just may help someone