External hard drive ejects on sleep

No, not working correctly. Ejects while sleeping and gives me the "improper ejecting" dialog.

Wild! That scenario only happens to me when the drive is plugged in to the hub. If I plug it into a spare USB 3.0 port on the computer and leave it turned on - no problem. But if I leave it plugged in and turn it off, watch out!!!

I'm playing with Jettison which seems to be able to eject it properly, but so far it has not been able to remount the drive when I wake the computer.

When I had my drive plugged into the hub, the only way I was able to remount the drive was to power cycle the drive. The only solution for me, it seems, is to plug the drive into the computer, do my backup with SuperDuper! - I haven't tried Time Machine yet (I upgraded from Tiger to ML) - and then unmounting the drive the normal way. With the way these drives are acting, it appears that Time Machine isn't going to be a viable option, at least until Apple gets this issue resolved. Nor is a scheduled backup with SuperDuper at a time when I'm not in front of the computer.

This is weird.

My self-powered rugged usb 3.0 Lacie drive (no external power source, just the usb3 cable) does not show the problem. it stays always on, sleep or not.

It has 3 partitions : 1 mac, 1 fat32 and 1 ntfs and all 3 do not seem to eject on sleep because they still show on wakeup. they appear right away on the desktop on wakeup, so i guess they do not eject and remount so quickly that i can't see it.

The drive behaves as if the imac had never gone to sleep, partitions are ready to open and work on without delay. This is odd because one may think that an usb self powered drive would turn off and eject when mac sleeps but it is not the case.

it must have to do with the signal the usb cable sends, if it sends data+power (no external power source) the drive stays on, if it only sends data signal the mac doesn't seem to be able to keep it from ejecting

This would indicate that all usb 3 hubs wouldn't work well at sleep (bad ejection and slow remount or no remount at all)

This is the same for me using Time Machine and backing up via Firewire 800 directly plugged into my MacBook Pro of course. Like you, it leaves no possibility except for manual backups and then ejecting the drive.

I called Apple Care again this afternoon in refernce to my open ticket on this issue and this time was referred to a senior technician. He had me shut down the Mac mini, unplug the power cable from the machine, wait two minutes, and then plug the cord back in. Then, Option, Command, 'r' and 'p', all at once, within one second of pressing the power button on the computer and waiting until after the second booting chime sound before releasing the key combination. It helps if you have three hands to do this. This resets the nonvolatile RAM and the SMC (System Management Controller). Instructions on the SMC process are here: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964http://. Interestingly, one of the symptoms listed at this link is "The computer sleeps or shuts down unexpectedly." I don't know if I'd recommend doing this on your own - it might be best to have an Apple Care person direct you.

I had to take my cat to the vet after doing this, so the computer went to sleep with the powered down hard drive plugged into the USB 3.0 port on the mini. When I came back 2:45 hours later, I woke the computer up and all was normal. I'm going to monitor this for a few days to see if this normal situation continues before declaring the problem solved. I'll post again in a day or so.

I forgot to post the link to the NV RAM reset procedure. Here it is: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379http://.

I don't know if this will solve the issue or not, but it might be worth trying ...

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback, i've got more.

Aside from my little rugged 3.0 Lacie Drive which works flawlessly, l was able to get a single usb 3.0 case from a friend for a backup 3.5" drive , it is this one: http://www.storeva.com/fr/SilverDrive-U3-68.html

I plugged it yesterday evening and it works perfects, as my rugged lacie does. That means that it does not seem (to have the need) to eject on sleep and the drive is still mounted and ready for use on wakeup.

i opened a CR2 image file and it showed without delay.

Note that it has an external power source, so it is not linked to having a separated power source or not.

In my non-working 4-drive usb 3.0 storage array, drives are ungracefully ejected (red exclamation box) and remounts painlfully on wakeup, or still show on desktop but aren't real because access on their files is extremely slow (finder shows blank screen without any files for a little time at first...)

Anyway, it all seems to boil down to the controler of the sata to usb3 interface which is in the box/case/bay to which the drive(s) are connected to.

re: Option, Command, 'r' and 'p'

I cannot imagine how this will help, but I just tried it and we'll see. I'm desperate to get this straightened out before it damages my backup files or something like that.

Pisonia, I just tried this, but your link is messed up. It starts to repeat itself at the end.

re: Option, Command, 'r' and 'p'

Nope, it still improperly ejects the disk and gives me the warning error.

Yeah, I think Apple should repeat itself, too. Do a search on "NV RAM reset apple" and "SMC reset Apple" - you'll find the links that way. I don't know what software Apple support forums are running on, but they definitel need to switch to a more user friendly (and standard!) format!!

The only thing I can suggest at this time is to disconnect your external hard drive from the hub and connect it to your computer. I've not had a problem with the improper ejection dialog box since I did that. I've had a bunch of other problems, but not that one! I do think there is an issue with a possible firmware conflict between the hub I have (Kanax) and the Apple, but I really don't know yet. It is a very weird problem, that's for sure!!

Unfortunately, I already have my external HD connected directly to my computer via Firewire 800 and still have the problem.