Mountain Lion improperly ejects external disks

I used "Jettison" from St. Clair Sopftware. I am running Maveric OS/X 10.9.2 on a iMac 27-inch, Late 2012. When my iMac goes to cleep, Jettison unmounts my external devices and remounts them again when woken up 🙂. This has solved my problem with external drives being ejected and not for-mounted. I have been ujsing Jettison since Moount Lion.

Ed

Message was edited by: E Sheard

Same problem here:

- Brand new 2013 Mac Pro 6-core

- Mavericks with all software updates

- WesternDigital portable USB3 1TB hard disk (HFS+, no hub involved)

The volume ejects randomly (usually re-mounting instantly) every few minutes with "not properly ejected" notification.

I'm afraid to use the drive for fear of corrupting data. Plus the alerts keep popping up while I'm watching a movie or playing a game.

(This has gone on as far back as Mountain Lion?? Wow. My "regular Lion" MacBook Air has no such problem.)

FWIW: the ejects seemed to happen with the bottom-right USB port (when facing the ports), but stopped happening when I used a different port. Luck, or a pattern? Can't be sure, but so far so good!

For those using WD this might help.

I did not have notice similar issues on my Lacie HDs.

Go to http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp

Find you product, update/install the following (instructions on WD website):

WD Firmware Updater for Mac

WD Macintosh + Turbo Drivers

The firmware update only works when connected using USB.

I am also using Jettison, but it did not solve my problem on the My Book Studio HDs.

Cheers

Just to add my recent experience:

1) Purchased new 2014 MBA. 10.9.4 and EFI firmware update 2.8.

2) Runs, sleeps, wakes, powers up and down with USB 2 devices connected. Always the case pre and post updates.

3) Purchased OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini 2.5" enclosure, USB 3 only, bus powered, Asmedia 1053E chipset, moved Hitachi from USB 2 enclosure to USB 3 enclosure. Improper eject messages when MBA sleeps, cannot be remounted with an MBA restart. Happened every time.

4) Returned drive and replaced with an OWC Express, same as above including chipset. Same exact problem.

5) Both drives work fine connected to a USB 2 iMac.

Could be an issue with the chipset as that's a constant, except the drives work fine if used with USB 2. I'm inclined to believe this is an Apple problem or a USB 3 controller issue (I believe Intel). Whatever it is, I certainly wish they would fix it. i can live with the issue on the Air as the external is used only as a backup drive and there's no unique data on the MBA that's not in the iMac. However, there's a fully spec'd rMBP custom build in my Saved Cart. And its going to stay there as long as this issue persists. It will be a docked machine in an I/O intensive environment and I see similar FireWire and Thunderbolt issues mentioned as well.

I'd return the second drive but its not worth the hassle as few people on this thread include data that might narrow down the issue and there appears to be a wide variety of USB hardware affected. Again, the MBA not the peripherals. And probably nothing to do with OSX.

I've been experiencing this for a few months, ever since adding an OWC 4-bay Qx2 external.

Am just now finding threads on this, and will add to them just to get them moved up to the front. This issue does not appear resolved.

My setup:

- Late-2008 iMac, Snow Leopard (clean install), new Samsung internal SSD, 4G RAM, new Wacom Pen&Touch tablet. No wireless.

- No unusual 3rd party software, no resource-hog anything, no gaming. Entire HDD contents don't exceed 300G at this time.

- The drives inside the enclosure are matched Hitachi, connected via FW800. I won't try USB2. Never owned WD.

- The only hub in the system is Ethernet, for simple file-sharing to a 2nd, much older, desktop (G4 PPC).

The abrupt unmount / eject started showing soon after initial Qx2 install. Other seemingly-unrelated behaviors occurred, along with error messages; everything worked fine when the Qx2 was disconnected (including the presence of an additional single external HDD, also OWC). Spent months observing and complaining to OWC. At their direction, I did the PRAM and SMC resets; no change. I was finally granted an RMA replacement, which for over week worked perfectly – but in the last couple days, two unmount / eject incidents have occurred. Despite the much better performance, the problem seems to linger, and I'm not convinced it's the external. Or OSX for that matter. I can't even be sure the the discs are unmounting despite the error messages. I also can't be sure my files aren't being corrupted as this happens repeatedly.

Other threads suggest a connection between Sleep and some confusion on the hardware end as to recognizing and/or properly ejecting when Sleep is selected. My understanding is that it's not uncommon for power supplies on even the priciest multi-bay enclosures to be wobbly.

Again, just moving this to the front burner, in hopes of reading new info.

gd0 wrote:

- The drives inside the enclosure are matched Hitachi, connected via FW800. I won't try USB2. Never owned WD.

In my experience, it's been the drive's firmware that is most often the culprit. I remember going through this issue a few years ago with my WD USB drives and finally one of their firmware updates cured the problem.

In the meantime, you've said you won't try USB. At this stage, using USB is your best bet to determine if Fire Wire is the source of the problem. Try running these disks using USB and see how things go. If the bad behavior continues, then you've eliminated both FW and USB as the source and you can focus your attention elsewhere, like upgrading the OS if that's a possibility for you.

Hello,

I started using “Jettison” , it ejects all external disks before your Mac sleeps or shuts down, and have not had any disk ejection problem since.

Ed Sheard

RogerOut wrote:

In my experience, it's been the drive's firmware that is most often the culprit. I remember going through this issue a few years ago with my WD USB drives and finally one of their firmware updates cured the problem.

In the meantime, you've said you won't try USB. At this stage, using USB is your best bet to determine if Fire Wire is the source of the problem. Try running these disks using USB and see how things go. If the bad behavior continues, then you've eliminated both FW and USB as the source and you can focus your attention elsewhere, like upgrading the OS if that's a possibility for you.

Thanks.

HDD firmware update sounds like an ordeal, at least as it's described on Hitachi's website, but I'll save that as a desperation last-ditch consideration, after consulting OWC.

I guess I can try USB2 the next time an unmount happens, which could be days, weeks, or minutes from now. But if my experience using a single ext HDD is worth anything, FireWire out of the iMac seems to be functional. No problems with a single, ever.

Trying to avoid an OS upgrade from the very stable and quick Snow Leopard. Mostly to avoid the cost of upgrading ancient Adobe software. Money is an even bigger problem around here than abrupt ejects.

Reading back, it sounds like Jettison won't necessarily fix this. But it will be another something to discuss with OWC.

I get the issue about an OS upgrade. Stable is good. 🙂 BTW, are you running the final version of Snow Leopard? I think it's 10.6.8. Man, considering we're are 10.10, Snow Leopard seems forever old now. lol

A firmware update is a very straight forward procedure, so if OWC offers one, you should seriously considering doing it. As for using USB, it's your best chance to narrow down the root of the problem.

Anyway, good luck. Hope you get it straightened out.

Thanks Roger

Yes, 10.6.8. This iMac is maxed out all around. At 6-7 years old, it's only got so much horsepower.

Will look at USB2 upon the next occurrence. With the one exception, it has been stable since the RMA replacement.

Intermittent problems are the worst!

I really do suspect some kind of hardware-power-supply-voltage conflict, however.

Maybe I'll get lucky and this issue will just go away.