External hard drive ejects on sleep

I'm guessing you ran the Lacie 2big in RAID 0, as it comes from Lacie? If that's the case, then it should never have been used as a backup drive.

If it had been re-setup as RAID 1, then even if one drive failed, you'd still be able to read the data because of the 2nd mirror drive...

Even so, the bare drives should still show up in Disk Utility. If they do not, then it's the Lacie enclosure that has failed, perhaps not the actual drives.

I have searched high and low for a solution. I have installed a clean system and still my Thunderbolt drives unmount wthen the system goes to sleep. I tried the "Swiss Fix" and it worked perfectly.

On mavericks I have gone 2, 3 and even 4 weeks without an ejection....so it may be to early to claim victory. In the case of ML it, for me at least, was not "fixed" until we got the supplemental update to 10.8.5.

Update: not only my external hard disks will be unmounted, also my Kindle connected on the usb / micro- usb after open the lid / stroke a key.

This is really a bad joke, apple ...

This thread has been here for about 1-1/2 years across multiple OS versions, with no fix or even acknowlegement of the problem from Apple. This is not the same company that has had great customer support in the past. This issue is a big deal to a lot of users and I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more coverage in the tech news. I'm not crazy enough to go back to Windows yet, but very dissappointed.

I went through the routine, can't tell if it works or not because the problem has been intermittent for me. But, after restart, should I rename the Launch folders, or leave the .old? No new Launch folders were created on restart.

I stopped following this long thread because it was getting so long that no clear message comes through other than frustration with Apple for not unraveling the interrelated problems (or at least telling us what they are doing about it). I also stopped in the hope that my new system - 27 iMac with Mavericks and LaCie 2big TM (Raid 1) - would get me past the issue. So far they have ... except that, when I try to use my old auxiliary image backup (an old usb 2 250 Iomega), I am back to getting messages that that drive has not properly dismounted (presumably during the iMac sleep cycles). Again, I am hoping that the problem will recede when I switch to a new WD usb 3 My Passport auxillary image backup. However, I expect that the problem will recur when I work with images backed up to the old external HD and turn it on. At that point, I guess I will temporarily have to turn off any Mac HD sleep settings temporarily. In sum, I don't think Apple has resolved the issue for me.

My father has a new iMac ME08LL/A and a Seagate Expansion 2TB USB 3.0 drive Model STBV2000100 for his time machine backups.

This is his first Mac, and we're having problems keeping the Time Machine drive mounted. Whenever the computer (running Mavericks) goes to sleep, the drive remains powered offer when the computer wakes back up.

I used a utility from Seagate to check that the power saving on the drive itself is set to 'never' and I

unchecked the setting to sleep the drive when possible under Mavericks.

Its very frustrating because he's a new mac user, so I frequently go over his house to find that backups never occur on his machine because the drive isn't mounted. Is there a workaround for this? I saw a mention of a 'Swiss Fix' but searching the thread I didn't find a post for a 'Swiss Fix', only references to it.

I saw a post on a different forum make mention of this $2 app that may be a workaround:

http://www.stclairsoft.com/Jettison/

My father has a new iMac ME08LL/A and a Seagate Expansion 2TB USB 3.0 drive Model STBV2000100 for his time machine backups.

This is his first Mac, and we're having problems keeping the Time Machine drive mounted. Whenever the computer (running Mavericks) goes to sleep, the drive remains powered offer when the computer wakes back up.

I used a utility from Seagate to check that the power saving on the drive itself is set to 'never' and I

unchecked the setting to sleep the drive when possible under Mavericks.

Its very frustrating because he's a new mac user, so I frequently go over his house to find that backups never occur on his machine because the drive isn't mounted. Is there a workaround for this? I saw a mention of a 'Swiss Fix' but searching the thread I didn't find a post for a 'Swiss Fix', only references to it.

I saw a post on a different forum make mention of this $2 app that may be a workaround:

http://www.stclairsoft.com/Jettison/

@Jason Haines

I appreciate the tip regarding how to configure my backup schema. Fortunately this isn't a running RAID 0, it came factory configured from Lacie running Raid 1.

@David Carlin

I tried Jettison first, to no avail. Hope it provides you with better results. The Swiss Fix is in this thread somewhere, check my first mention, then back up a couple pages from there. However, the Swiss Fix didn't help my issue either. I do genuinely hope your results differ.

@David Carlin

Here you go, here's the link to the "Swiss Fix" from forum member, macbirdy: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4174723?answerId=22186740022#22186740022

I am somewhere in the middle of this whole thread with the same problem of OSX ejecting my external drive when my computer sleeps, and then of course getting the message about the drive being ejected improperly......

For what it is worth, I have been following the thread to see if anyone came up with a solution since it looks like Apple won't or can't. I vaguely recall someone saying that they tried the Onyx utility to see if that helped so I finally downloaded it and ran just about every maintenance and cleaning utility in the program and voila! the eject on sleep problem seems to be solved. It has been a couple of week now with no problems. I am sorry that I didn't do one thing at a time and document it for this thread so I can't really say what fixed the problem,but I have been so frustrated that I just took the sledgehammer approach and went for it.

Perhaps the utilization of Onyx might help others and if you do try it, good luck!

I have been having the same problem with my backup drive. I originally thought it was associated with Sleep/Wake. I now, however think that something else is the cause.

I read through most of the posting in this thread, and tried the suggested solutions. I changed my preferences to never sleep; I then also used Caffeine to prevent sleep; I tried the “Swiss Fix”, I even tried the OnyX suggestion; and I went so far as to erase and reformat my backup drive, but nothing helped.

Anytime I leave my back drive mounted for more than one backup (automatic or manual) Time Machine will begin the next backup (Preparing Backup), and then the disk will eject after several minutes of this Preparing backup mode.

I have now reached the point that I doing manual backups as needed, eject the disk myself, and remount the next time I want to backup.

I’m not sure what to try next. I’m thinking it is either a bad external hard drive or a problem with my system software. (This may or may not be related, but I have noticed at times I have applications that are running, but do not show up in the dock. I notice this when emptying the trash, and I’m told that the file is in use. Pressing option-command-esc shows the running applications. I do a Force Quit, and all is fine.) I really don’t want to reinstall Mavericks, and do a restore of my applications and documents, nor do I want to invest in a new drive, but I might be out of options.

Any other suggestions?

elih, it seems you have the same problem I have. It is not related to sleep. My Time Machine drive will just randomly disconnect while I am working on the computer. Re-installing Mavericks will not help. I have done that at least 6 times. I also thought it may be related to Parallels but I am pretty sure it happened even before I re-installed Parallels too. Do you have Parallels installed?

Thaks for the info. I don't use Parallels and do not have it installed. My next move will be to get another drive and try it. I probably try to borrow one before investing in a new one.