Q: External hard drive ejects on sleep

I found this thread only today when I plugged in a Seagate 3TB external USB3 drive, got it going with Time Machine, and was then amazed to see that when the machine slept and woke, the drive was disconnected.  It would not remount automatically, even though powered on, and in place of the proper icons were those messages about the drives (two partitions) not being properly disconnected.

I skipped ahead about two years to the last page of the thread, found the reference to Jettison, paid the monumental price of US$4.95, and installed it.  It takes care of the disconnects, and it keeps Time Machine running properly.  It does not, however, seem to prevent those nasty "disk not ejected properly" messages when the machine crashes.

Now it's my belief that all, repeat all, Jettison is doing is a small set of tasks that the OS itself should be performing itself -- checking to see if there's data in cache waiting to be written to a removable device, making sure that it's written, dismounting the device, and then issuing the sleep command.  Windows has done this for decades, and it borders on incredible that such an apparent bug should remain in Apple's latest iteration of OS X.  If Apple refuses even to acknowledge the problem after two years spanning 3 upgrades of the OS, then that is reprehensible.

I have also been using Jettison and it does seem to be a good workaround for a problem that Apple should have fixed long ago. I set Jettison to dismount discs before sleep and use the Jettison drop down to manually sleep, no more auto sleep. I may be too cautious about auto sleep, though. Sleep after SuperDuper nightly backups are happening correctly.

how u fix the problem??

Look for the link to the Jettison download one or two pages back in this thread.

I believe that part of my problem was having my USB 3 external drive connected via a USB 3 hub rather than directly to the Mac's USB3 port.  Connecting it directly to the computer along with running Jettison seems to have stopped the problem on my rig.

I'm experiencing the dirty unmounting with a Vantec HX4R connected via USB3 to a 2013 Mac Pro. Preventing the Mac Pro from sleeping appears to work around the issue, but is not the preferred solution. I have written to Vantec support asking if they can do anything on their end to support Macs with the super low power sleep mode that triggers this problem. Given the variety of manufacturers whose enclosures are affected, it does seem that Apple making changes on the OS side would be a more efficient way to solve the problem than every third-party manufacturer issuing firmware updates — assuming support can be added via firmware.

I just got a new IMAC and experienced the same issue with a RAID 10 array with 4 drives spontaneously disconnecting in the middle of a data transfer with the message "you should eject disk properly, etc. etc." message.

As many others I tried all the obvious solutions. Different cables, different drives, etc. Then I read something about radio wave interference from wireless keyboards. Well, I don't have wireless keyboards or mice (don't like them) but still, it stuck in the back of my mind.

I did find that a USB 2.0 cable with noise suppression dongles at each end worked just fine, if a bit slowly. Anyway, I found an old set of ferrite couplings that were made for video cables back in the day and placed one set at each end of the USB 3 cable. I then moved my RAID array as far from the computer as possible and plugged it all back in. The problem has not reoccurred even with the transfer of very large folders of files from a networked PC RAID.

Just a thought but it seems to have worked for me although the fact that this sort of thing is necessary does not speak well for Apple.

I figured out my problem this morning. Why the ≈$400 spent on Apple support didn't get them to provide me with an answer is stilll beyond me.

Somewhere between the harddrive randomly disconnecting (at sleep) and Jettison taking liberties with drives, my external harddrive had it's visibility changed.

So running from the terminal the following command resolved my issue:

chflags -R nohidden /Path/to/HardDrive

I hope this helps someone else. If your drives aren't showing up in Finder, but you can access them using Go»Go To Folder, then you might want to try the command above to change your flags on that drive.

Did the Mac OSX 10.9.2 update fix the problem with the external hard drive unmounting?

Re: MacGallent:

No it did not.

I have similar issue, but have a symptom not reported by any others.

I can eject the external drive from the finder and then manualy shut down from the Finder and then restart with no problems. this is as it should be.

I can eject the disc from Finder and then manually Sleep from the finder and then restart with the "improper ejection" note, this makes no sense; if the disc is ejected manually prior sleep, how is that differant from Shut Down ?

I have all the other problems related to Auto Sleep also, BUT the Ext Drv always remounts with no problems; maybe this is Apples fix.

Iaslic:

Does not sound like a fix.  If you are getting the "improper ejection" after you have ejected the hard drive and manually put to sleep, then the OS is reading the manual ejection of the hard drive as having occurred or is misiinterpreting it or (and this shouldn't be possible, but I am beginning to find out that there are times when we need to give these speedy machines more time) it is possible that you are manually putting the main drive to "sleep" too quickly after ejecting the external hard drive.

We need Apple or an expert to tell us if this can be a problem.

Until we get confirmation that Apple has fixed the underlying problem(s), my suggestion is not to use either auto sleep or manual sleep.  Mavericks seems to have altered the whole notion of (computer) sleep and Apple needs to clarify when the user should (if ever until a real fix) invoke it, given the ejection problem.

MacGallant:

Can't tell whether 10.9.2 is a fix since I have avoided sleep.

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/message/24587180#24587180.

yes, but turning it off did no good either check it, uncheck it - same result: "improper disc ejcetion"

roger

My problem with Jettison is that it keeps asking me to autheticate with my Apple ID every time i switch users. If it's not one thing, it's another

In reply to the following:

MacGallant Los Angeles, CA 

Did the Mac OSX 10.9.2 update fix the problem with the external hard drive unmounting?

No, for me it brought it back. Just selecting "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" in the energy saver control panel had been an effective workaround for me until 10.9.2.

Hi, i think its nice answer))
https://discussions.apple.com/message/21105243#21105243
That may be attributable to a 'delicate' connection.  Make certain that the USB is well seated.  Try a different USB port.  Try a different cable.  Try a different enclosure.  Last, perhaps the HDD is being uncooperative and should be replaced.