Mountain Lion improperly ejects external disks

The 10.8.5 Supplemental Update seems to have fixed it! Finally!

I've got a similar problem but with my dvd-play. The optical drive does not even accept a disc. whwn I checked the system information for the optical device I found that the dvd-player is powered off. the report says;

HL-DT-ST DVDRW GS23N:

Model: HL-DT-ST DVDRW GS23N

Revision: SB03

Serial Number: KZ8A2GK3501

Native Command Queuing: No

Detachable Drive: No

Power Off: Yes

Async Notification: No

I have tried some solutions I found on the net but nothing has helped so far. I have no idea what to do to "power on" the optical device. Anybody has any idea??

When 10.8.5 was released, my Mac Mini was suffering from improper disk ejection when the machine went to sleep. The supplementary update that followed resolved that problem for my pair of eSATA drives connected via a Thunderbolt hub.

However, even with the supplementary update installed, the improper ejection issue remains with my Western Digital external USB3 drives connected through a USB3 hub. As it stands now, I have to disallow the machine from going to sleep...

Agreed. I am still seeing the issue with USB3 drives.

Jettison does _not_ solve the problem, as it cannot eject a drive that is "in use", yet when OS X sleeps it somehow stimulates the drive to effect the equivalent of a "force eject". Worse yet, once this has happened, OS X will not recognize the device at all, without a reboot. Looking at the console, it is as if the OS believes the device to already be mounted, yet neither the Finder nor Disk Utility can see the device. After a reboot, the device will mount and you will get your log replayed, bringing the filesystem back to stable. Apps that had files opened on the device (e.g., iPhoto) will recognize that their files were not cleanly closed and be forced to verify/repair them.

Not a good situation at all.

As with RogerOut, my only solution is to not let my laptop sleep, or to close all apps and eject the drive before allowing it to sleep.

Phooey.

My 2012 Retina Macbook still randomly ejected my USB 3 Western Digital Passport drive with 10.8.5 along with the supplemental update. My USB 3 Seagate works fine though. I will say this problem only happens on my right USB port which I have been told is linked to the trackpad, keyboard, screen, and bluetooth... maybe even wifi.

In any case I have updated to Mavericks and the problem still persists with my USB 3 Western Digital drive on the right port.

Well, that answers my question. I was wondering if this problem had been fixed under Mavericks. Apparently not. Almost a year of "head buried in the sand" is pretty good going, even by Apple's standards!

I'm wondering if the size of the partitions might be a factor?

I have 2 newly purchased HGST Touro 4TB drives connected to my mac mini file/print/XBMC server. One of the drives is partitioned into 2 x 2TB partitions, the other as a single 4TB partition. The 2 x 2TB partitioned drive has never spontaneously ejected, the 4TB partitioned drive spontaneously ejects every few days. I wonder does ML's problem lie with handling partitions >2TB?

One other weird thing I've noticed: the 2x2TB partitioned drive has the two partitions named "backup" and "media". When I browse to my mac mini on my network, those partitions show as "backup" and "backup-1", rather than their 'proper' partition names.

Sigh! –I can confirm that this issue persists with Mavericks. I've just ARD'd into my Mac Mini, which I updated to Mavericks two days ago and –sure enough– there was an alert telling me to eject my HD properly [once again the one formatted as a single 4TB partition].

I'm going to try repartitioning the 4TB drive into 2 x 2TB partitions now and see if avoiding >2TB partitions is the answer.

CORRECTION: To this and previous post. I've just re-checked and found that the external drive with 2 partitions which doesn't spontaneously eject is actually formatted as 1TB + 3TB [not 2 x 2TB] so, if my theory about parition size being a factor is correct, maybe >3TB is the trigger point?

Me again!

I've just fired up Disc Utility to see if reformatting my recalcitrant 4TB drive into 2 partitions would make a difference to its spontaneous ejection problems and noticed that the drive showed up differently in Disk Utility to its better behaved sibling [which is currently formatted as 1TB + 3TB partitions]. As I have Disc Utility's 'Debug' menu enabled:

I see the hidden partitions listed for discs in Disc Utility. i noticed that the 1TB+2TB formatted drive was listed as having an invisible disc1s1 partition alongside the two named partitions. The 4TB drive was listed as having an invisible EFI partition alongside its named one. So, as well as being partitioned differently the drives are actually using different partitioning schemes too: the 1TB+2TB one has been partitioned using the Apple Partition Map scheme whereas the 4TB one has been partitioned using GUID.

[Access the partition scheme options under the 'Options' button in Disc Utility's 'Partition' tab]

http://d.pr/i/FwLf+

So before I attempt dividing the 4TB drive into two smaller partitions [I'd prefer to keep it as a single 4TB partition], I'm going to reformat it as Apple Partition Map, instead of GUID and see if that makes any difference. From my readings around the web, while wrestling with installing Debian on some of my old Apple hardware, I know that Rod Smith for one is extremely sceptical about some of Apple's implementations of certain partitioning schemes, so perhaps the partitioning scheme itself might be the culprit.

Well, here goes. I'll report back in a few days, if this latest bit of voodoo makes any difference.

If people could post whether or not they are having this issue on an iMac, Macbook, Mini and if they have tried other USB ports that would be great.

I think has something to do a with a power management. My 1 TB USB3 seagate has no problems with the right port as mentioned but my Western Digital passport does which is 2TB in size. Left port works flawlessly with both drives. My right port also works with my USB3 64GB lexar thumb drive.

I'm getting tired of these ejecting problems and will eventually get a Synology NAS station to keep my photos and family videos on.

I'm running a late 2012 fully loaded Mac Mini.

I did update the firmware on the Western Digitial USB3 drives, that made zero difference. My setup worlked flawlessly under 10.8.4. It was 10.8.5 that started all of this for me. I always wonder how they manage to break something that was working just fine. You know, like iTunes 10.7 lol

I've simply turned off power managment. The CPU won't wear out because of it. 🙂

edit: One related issue. I think I mentioned desktop aliases disappearing along with the ejection issue. In addition, i've lost custom disk icons as well. Fortunately the actual disk data is not being corrupted, but that's just a matter of time. The safe fix is to disallow the computer from going to sleep. Mine is set to "never" and the monitor to 1.5 hours.

My problem is with a bus-powered drive on a MacBook Air (2013). It happens to be USB 3, but it has the problem on _any_ port, even a powered hub. This makes me think that what is happening is that the OS is sending a command to the drive that it _thinks_ is telling the drive to sleep, but the drive is reacting by powering off (and hence appears to be improperly removed).

Well, I don't want to tempt fate but it's now been 5 days since I reformatted my 4TB eternal using Apple Partition Map instead of the original GUID and it's stayed mounted all that time. It's probably too soon to proclaim victory but, given that this disc never stayed mounted for more than two or three days at a time before, I'm feeling quietly confident I might have cracked it.

T'would be interesting if some other folks could try reformatting their auto-ejecting external drives as Apple Partition Map instead of the default GUID and see if it works for you too.

Well, back to the drawing board I'm afraid. I spoke too soon. The hard drive I reformatted as Apple Partition Map did eventually spontaneously eject again, albeit that it did manage to stay mounted for over a week this time.

Now to test out my theory that >3GB partition size is the fly in the ointment, by repartitioning it into 2 x 2GB partitions.

Will report back anon.

Same is the problem with my macbook pro as well. It spontaneously ejects any external drive connected through USB.

Macbook Software OS X 10.9 (13A603)

Same problems with me.

I use many Lacie (D2 Quadra and rugged) and WD (My Book and My passport) both in my home and in the company I work. I usually connect them using fire wire 800.

This problems have happened on both 12 core and 8 core Mac Pros, with 16, 24 and 64 Gb of RAM, in my home and in the office. I have not notice any problem in regards to the Lacies so far, but all Western Digital have been ejected espontaneously. It can be only coincidence, but it always happens when tranfering huge amount of data. I work with video and animation and it is a commom task to transfer several Gb of highres mov files between HDs. It happens ramdomly, sometimes the HD that is receiving the files is ejected, sometimes the oposite.

After ejected, the HDs sometimes cannot mount again and just do so after restarting the machine Pretty scary!

Some HDs are not mounting at all on specific computers running moutain lion, but works perfectly on other OSX in different computers.

Some people in the office that had the same problem found a solution that seems fix the problem permanently. It looks like the only solution is to format the HD again by using Disk Utility on a machine that runs Moutain Lion. The funny thing is that it olny works when formatted with a different name. I have not tried that yet, but I heard that works. To be honest, this solution is a hassle for those like me that have many TBs already stored in their HDs.

I have tried pretty much everything else and did not succeed on none.

Let me know if someone comes up with another solution

cheers