Disk not ejected properly

There certainly is something strange in the handling of external devices in Yosemite. When all my drives are asleep, my mac pro isn't doing anything (I don't use sleep because it then warms up unnecessarily) it sometimes happens that suddenly my monitor is turned on unexplainably. This means the handling of external devices is a problem in Yosemite. I've even had the idea that there is something wrong with the security on my mac pro, but that should be as safe as ever. Still, why was there a problem with two external drives I bought from Apple and no problem with those I bought from other outlets? Weird.

To do with that very thing of drives spinning up when the mac is supposedly asleep. I blame spotlight for almost everything. It is the clunkiest and most intrusive way of checking disks - getting in the way of everything, hogging cpu...

I generally live in the same room as my iMac which is "asleep" yet I keep hearing hard disks (external) spin up then down. My mac is meant to be asleep ie on standby. Never had this with an older imac running snow leopard. My retina imac gets switched off now. This avoids everything in this thread but it is not a solution for many people here. Astonishing that Apple have nothing to say about it.

This has just started happening to me, which is probably the weirdest part. My computer is not asleep, it is in screensaver mode. I come back to the computer, "wake" it up, and there's the message again. At first I thought I had been inadvertently turning off the external drive... but this time I realize that not only is the drive on, but it's still mounted on the desktop.

Sounds familiar, right? geez.

CMON APPLE. REPLY.

Please Apple, do something about the "Disk not ejected properly"- problem.

I have LACie Rugged hard drives connected to my brand new iMAc-Yosemite - and I simply can't work on them since the machine keeps ejecting them.

I have disconnected Spotlight (the external drives are in the Private pane), but nothing helps.

Same thing with LACie 1 and 2 TB drives.

This a real problem when you are editing video with material on hard drives - PLEASE FIX THIS PROBLEM!!

Thanks iPhabio... I had to return my late-2013 iMac because it wouldn't wake from sleep.

When I got it back (nothing done to it), my Time Machine backup Seagate External 2GB HDD would constantly eject (or not eject cleanly).

Your fix seems to have remedied the situation.

Many thanks indeed!!! 🙂

Right--all the iMacs and Macbook Pros, Retina and otherwise, on Mavericks and above, and all the USB and some of the TB external drives, including LaCie and Western Digital, USB 2.0 and 3.0, but it's your disc that's defective.

Maybe Apple doesn't have enough cash on hand to be able to afford to put a couple of software engineers on this problem and solve it.

I feel your pain...

I had a Mac Pro 4,1 and then a mid-2010 iMac, never had an issue with USB.

Upgraded to Late-2013 iMac (all USB 3.0 ports), and now THE SAME DRIVES that were working perfectly on the other Macs, using the IDENTICAL Operating System, are now not being ejected, and WORSE, being ejected at RANDOM. My computer also could not wake from sleep by any means (mouse/power button/keyboard).

NOTE: The main remaining problem was disconnecting WD 2TB external. This seems to be completely fixed by iPhabio post earlier in this thread.

I returned this to Apple under warranty, as a Sleep issue, and the computer was returned to me in working order. It may have just needed 15 hours off power to fully reset. I thoroughly recommend this trick to anyone having the same issues. My 2TB WD external is now ejecting correctly on sleep (and not automatically ejecting itself at random). Reset SMC and PRAM/nvRAM, and then take it completely off power for 12+ hours. Restore OS using Internet Recovery (Command-Option-R at startup), and it will revert to the original OS that came installed on that system (in my case, 10.9.5).

I must admit that the computer has been humming along beautifully since getting it back from Apple, and applying iPhabio

s fix from this thread. I will not update to Yosemite, it is a clunky, slow mess compared to Mavericks :-/

Months ago I had updated to Yosemite and had this problem with discs not ejected properly and a kernel panic each time I shut down my thunderbolt2 drives. Since the Yosemite update a few days ago the problem has gone. No more discs not ejected properly nor any more kernel panics. In other discussions this problem is reported to have been solved.

So you may consider updating now.

Not going to update, however I can report that since doing iPhabio's fix posted previously, my late-2013 iMac has been working PERFECTLY. Many thanks for this thread, and iPhabio for a strange, but functional, workaround.

Robster50

Hi All

I am not sure if the fix I am about to relay will work for everyone here BUT it has certainly worked for me!

I have a new MBPr which I migrated from my old MBPr and immeadiatly started to get the problems described in this forum.

I have investigaed most of the solutions suggested here and elsewhere without any success, I did install Jettison but while this masked the problem it actually stopped most of my backups working!

So I called Apple support and pushed it very hard until I had a Teir 2 person on the line and she was incredibly helpful, supportive and instisted she woudl ge the problem fixed and she delivered.

She pinned the problem down to the migration from the older machine/prefs corruption.

I will try and record here exactly what we did.

Instructions

1. Pull out your ethernet cable and disable WiFi and any other network connectivity you have.

2. Open Finder, go to your computer and then select you Macintosh HD (or whatever you have renamed it).

3. Go to Macintosh HD - Library - Preferences

4. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the list and you ewill see a folder called SystemConfiguration

5. Pull this folder onto the desktop.

6. Go to System Preferences - Sharing and change the name of your computer, even just a litlle bit.

7. Reboot

8. Re-enable Wifi and Ethernet

9. If you have installed Jettison, remove it and remove it from your start up items.

Just to continue this epic thread. After months of irritation at my iSCSI drive being reported as 'not safely ejected'. This appears to have cured this.

(iSCSI is a network drive in my NAS box that I use for Time Machine.)

Config: MBPRO, 10.9.5

Nice one. 😎

This is Robster's fix for iPhabio's questions. So iPhabio's fix or Robster's fix means the same thing.

Just to continue this epic thread. After months of irritation at my iSCSI drive being reported as 'not safely ejected'. This appears to have cured this.

(iSCSI is a network drive in my NAS box that I use for Time Machine.)

Config: MBPRO, 10.9.5

...

Apologies for such a long previous post - was trying to help someone else hitting the 24th page of this. 😕 I've just had the dreaded '.. disk not ejected ..' box pop up. Sadly, this fix (removing/recreating /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration) did not work for me. 😢 I am unable to edit my original post now. 😠

I had the same problem with a Mac mini (late 2009 4GB) and 2 FW HD (G-Tech and MyBook) after upgrading from Snow to Mavericks (running from G-Tech).

This helped me (found this on a forum at work; several restarts and sleeps later still working normally):

Problem:

Disk 'not properly ejected' error message after system sleep

(HD USB/FW on OS X 10.7-10.9)

Solution:

First, eject your external HD(s) properly (reboot or remount if necessary to do so)

Then perform the following actions:

1 - System controller reset:

Power down and unplug all power for a minute or 2

2 - PRAM reset:

Power on, immediately press and hold Command+Option+P+R

until you hear the 2nd startup chime

(I had to choose the startup disk after this, as Mavericks resides on an external drive, and Snow is still on the internal one.

Energy Saver settings: Computer sleep: never; put hard disks to sleep: yes; wake for network: yes; start up after down: no)

This worked for me - 24 hours now with no 'disk not ejected' warnings. 🙂

⚠ Its very low level so only recommended if you're comfortable at the command line on your Mac, have backups to recover from & understand a bit about the internals of the OS. ⚠

This is a long post about all the options available at the time (2013) for sleep/wakeup and external drives. http://www.atpeaz.com/index.php/2013/automaticlly-eject-external-disks-on-sleep- reconnect-after-os-x/

It mentions a free utility called SleepWatcher. I have applied that piece of the post. It ejects my network drive on sleep, and remounts it on wakeup.

Hurray. 😍

This is a workaround, NOT a solution. Please try the two (identical) tried and tested posts before, also, disconnect power from your machine OVERNIGHT - at least 8 hours- after resetting PRAM/nvRAM/SMC and applying the fix, just to see if it is fixed. This prolonged disconnect from the power (along with the previous fix on this forum) got my USB3.0 x 4 ports all sleeping perfectly.

SleepWatcher is more for hackintosh setups, with dodgy USB ownership issues. This should not happen on real Apple Macs !

This is a workaround, NOT a solution. Please try the two (identical) tried and tested posts before, also, disconnect power from your machine OVERNIGHT - at least 8 hours- after resetting PRAM/nvRAM/SMC and applying the fix, just to see if it is fixed. This prolonged disconnect from the power (along with the previous fix on this forum) got my USB3.0 x 4 ports all sleeping perfectly.

SleepWatcher is more for hackintosh setups, with dodgy USB ownership issues. This should not happen on real Apple Macs !

It works for me with the stated caveats. Lose the attitude man. 😕

This is an iSCSI drive hosted on a NAS box, no USB ports involved.. ℹ