iPhabio
Level 1 (2 points)

Q: Disk not ejected properly

Hi I'm having this issue since I upgraded to Mavericks where almost every time I put my computers to sleep I get the "Disk not ejected propoerly" message and every disk but the system one is not mounted and cannot be found by Disk Utility.

 

I have a Mac Mini late 2009 and a Macbook Pro 15 mid 2009 and I'm having this issue in both machines. Never had any issues before in any of my machines, not in Leopard, Snow Leopard or Lion.

 

On my Mini I have two external USB drives and on my MBP I have a SSD, where the system is installed, and a HD (I replaced my optical drive with a bay to install the extra disk).

 

I researched the issue and found a couple of threads where people sugested to buy a 3rd party app that would unmount the disks at sleep and remount them at wake, but I think this shouldn't be a issue, since it never happened with any version of OSX I had used before.

 

Is anybody else having this issue as well? Is there any word from Apple on this subject? Can I hope for a fix?

 

Thanks

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 28, 2013 9:55 AM

by Robster50,Solvedanswer
Robster50 Robster50
Level 1 (38 points)
Mac OS X
A:

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.

 

You shoudl be good to go.

 

My machine was constantly ejecting my USB drive, even if left for onnly 10-15 minutes, since doing this I have not had one single ejection and I am into 48 plus hours of run time.

 

If you like what Jettison does but don't want to eject the disks everytime your computer sleeps and it will!, then try UnDock from the Mac App store.

 

Very similar functionality BUT it is a manual process.

 

In my case if I am going to be going out I will simply use the key combo I hae seletced Ctrl-Alt-Command plus U and all my external devices undock.

 

I really hope this helps one or more you you guys.

 

Robin

Posted on Jan 25, 2014 12:05 AM

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Q: Disk not ejected properly

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  • by kahjot,

    kahjot kahjot May 7, 2014 9:06 AM in response to ministryotech
    Level 4 (1,416 points)
    Desktops
    May 7, 2014 9:06 AM in response to ministryotech

    Also, please go into more detail about your dead 3TB Seagate. In what way has it stopped functioning? Is it an internal or external drive? More details would help a lot.

     

    I have three 3TB Seagate externals (Desktop Backup Plus, previous generation). One of them, a FW800/USB 2 model, unmounted itself randomly and persistently and at one point seemed unsalvageable; luckily, I had the spares on hand with which to figure out what was going on, because these particular Seagate externals have swappable bases. When the problem drive was attached to a different base, the unmounting problems disappeared and I was able to get the drive back to normal after running my repair apps. Seagate replaced the bad base, and the new base has been working perfectly.

  • by genius_foo,

    genius_foo genius_foo May 7, 2014 9:08 AM in response to ministryotech
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 7, 2014 9:08 AM in response to ministryotech

    Hey ministryotech,

     

    Have you tried caffeinate?  Since it's a machine that is always on it might work for you.  Just open Terminal, type "caffeinate", hit return and leave it running forever.

     

    I'm also curious what a caddy is.

  • by ministryotech,

    ministryotech ministryotech May 7, 2014 9:36 AM in response to kahjot
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 7, 2014 9:36 AM in response to kahjot

    @kahjot - A caddy is an external hard drive box / enclosure that you put hard drives in. External hard drives come fitted in caddies, but you can just buy caddies and put your own hard drives in them.

     

    In regards to the Seagate drive, it's the actual drive itself that's dead. I've tried it in different caddies and on different machines and operating systems and it just won't spin up anymore. It's as if it's not even there. It looks like, at some point, when it's been disconnected the drive has crashed. I can't even get it up enough to run a SMART check off one of my Linux servers.

  • by ministryotech,

    ministryotech ministryotech May 7, 2014 9:29 AM in response to genius_foo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 7, 2014 9:29 AM in response to genius_foo

    I don't thing the caffeinate solution would work for me as I seem to be getting disconnections even while I'm actively connected to the machine.

  • by genius_foo,

    genius_foo genius_foo May 7, 2014 10:04 AM in response to ministryotech
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 7, 2014 10:04 AM in response to ministryotech

    Hi ministryotech,

    Caffeinate is easy to try and it could help.  The biggest change in Mavericks was they added very aggressive energy management which tries to turn off processes and hardware all the time, even when you are actively using the computer.  If you tried caffeinate and it helps it would be a good data point for us all trying to figure out what's going on.

  • by kahjot,

    kahjot kahjot May 7, 2014 11:48 AM in response to ministryotech
    Level 4 (1,416 points)
    Desktops
    May 7, 2014 11:48 AM in response to ministryotech

    ministryotech wrote:

     

    @kahjot - A caddy is an external hard drive box / enclosure that you put hard drives in. External hard drives come fitted in caddies, but you can just buy caddies and put your own hard drives in them.

     

    In regards to the Seagate drive, it's the actual drive itself that's dead. I've tried it in different caddies and on different machines and operating systems and it just won't spin up anymore. It's as if it's not even there. It looks like, at some point, when it's been disconnected the drive has crashed. I can't even get it up enough to run a SMART check off one of my Linux servers.

     

    Thanks for clarifying the terminology. "Caddy" sounds like what is usually called an external drive enclosure here; but I also have one old ATA enclosure that uses swappable trays, so I was picturing something like those trays when you mentioned "caddies".

     

    I usually buy good HD enclosures and install my drive of choice in them, but I also have a few brand-name externals that we acquired for little or nothing (two Seagates and one WD). If yours doesn't spin up, it is most likely dead. But its failure might be unrelated to the ejection issues. Is the Seagate still under warranty?

  • by JesseBob,

    JesseBob JesseBob May 7, 2014 12:13 PM in response to Robster50
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 7, 2014 12:13 PM in response to Robster50

    Shortly after updating to 10.9.2 I started getting the unexpected ejects on a 3TB Seagate drive connected to my Thunderbolt display on my late 2012 retina MacBook Pro. The problem continued even when I connected the drive directly to the rMBP on a second Thunderbolt port. Robster50's fix has worked so far, and it also fixed a very annoying problem I was having with my Magic TrackPad moving the mouse erratically, stuttering and often not registering clicks on the first tap. The SystemConfiguration folder seems to hold a lot of plists and apparently one or more of them got corrupted somewhere along the line. Thanks Robin!

  • by mmanna1,

    mmanna1 mmanna1 May 8, 2014 1:04 PM in response to JesseBob
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iCloud
    May 8, 2014 1:04 PM in response to JesseBob

    I have tried, Jettison, Robin50's suggestion and the "Spotlight" method and nothing works for very long.  My SeaGate OneTouch4 keeps getting "ejected".  It all started with OSX 10.9.2.  I sure hope Apple fixes this problem.

  • by genius_foo,

    genius_foo genius_foo May 8, 2014 1:48 PM in response to mmanna1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 8, 2014 1:48 PM in response to mmanna1

    Hi mmanna1,

    Have you tried caffeinate (in Terminal)?  I'm curious whether it works for anyone other than me!!!

  • by mmanna1,

    mmanna1 mmanna1 May 8, 2014 2:18 PM in response to genius_foo
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iCloud
    May 8, 2014 2:18 PM in response to genius_foo

    No.  I am new to apple so i am not sure how to run it.  I think I just opern Terminal and type "caffeinate", but are there any other qualifiers?  I just downloaded the "upgrade" to Jettison to see if that works.

  • by genius_foo,

    genius_foo genius_foo May 8, 2014 4:25 PM in response to mmanna1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 8, 2014 4:25 PM in response to mmanna1

    Hi Mmanna1,

    Yes, just open Terminal, type "caffeinate" (without the quotes), hit return, and leave it running forever.  You can make the Terminal window small or minimize it.  You'll have to remember to do this when you restart your Mac.

    You can stop it by either closing the Terminal window, or typing a control-C into the Terminal window.

  • by mmanna1,

    mmanna1 mmanna1 May 8, 2014 8:40 PM in response to genius_foo
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iCloud
    May 8, 2014 8:40 PM in response to genius_foo

    Thank you.  I have done it.  Will see how long it lasts.  Seems like a real problem that Apple needs to solve.  The only reason I have an external hard drive is for the Time Machine.  There must be another way around the problem.  I guess Apple wants us to use iCloud to store the backups.  Not sure I want to do that.

  • by mmanna1,

    mmanna1 mmanna1 May 10, 2014 10:43 AM in response to genius_foo
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iCloud
    May 10, 2014 10:43 AM in response to genius_foo

    The Caffeinate method did not work either.  As a test I mounted a USB Flash drive to the iMac in addition to the SeaGate Maxtor OneTouch 4 external hard drive.  Lo and behold the hard drive is still being ejected but the flash drive is not.  Perhaps that is a clue that could add to the solution.  Why would not both be ejected?

  • by ataynay,

    ataynay ataynay May 11, 2014 3:55 PM in response to iPhabio
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 11, 2014 3:55 PM in response to iPhabio

    Just a quick update:

     

    I have not heard back from Apple since the problem was escalated to Engineering and the system file was sent to them for examination.

     

    Also, this afternoon I plugged a simple thumb drive into my USB port to copy some files over.  I'll give you three guesses what happened and the first two and a half don't count:  only one file was copied before the 'disk not ejected properly' error appeared.

     

    It's a thumb drive, a flash drive, just a little stick I can carry files around on.  'Frustrated' is not the word I would use right now.  "Righteously ******" is closer.

  • by mrrogerz,

    mrrogerz mrrogerz May 11, 2014 11:40 PM in response to Robster50
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 11, 2014 11:40 PM in response to Robster50

    Robster50's solution worked for me with a Seagate Free Agent 3Tb drive used with Time Machine on a MBP 5,1. A Monoprice 8 port hub connects the pair. When ejecting the external drive from the Finder, the process is also quicker - no 2-3 second wait for ejection. Thanks!

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