Q: Disk not ejected properly

Hi,

I have also been dealing with this "eject" issue for some time now but I finally solved the problem (keeping my fingers crossed ).

My problem was resolved by buying 2 new cables. One from my iMac to a USB 3.0 hub and one cable from my WD external drive to the hub. It's been a week now with no ejection incidents (which used to happen daily) and the HD is still mounted when my iMac wakes from sleep. BTW, I'm using Mavericks and had the problem even with Snow Leopard installed.

Mikeymark, could you clarify that?

I have a 4 port 3.0 powered Amazon Basics Hub which connects via its own hardwired cable to a 3.0 port on my MackBook Pro Retina. My WD Elements 1.5 TB USB 3.0 HD connects to the hub with a 3.0 cable supplied with the HD.

Are you saying to connect to the Mac via a separate 3.0 cable from a port in the hub to the Mac? Or do you think you had defective cables?

Also, I think I get the "ejects" even when the HD is connected directly to the Mac 3.0 port.

I found another thread in which someone said to do the following:

"Start your Mac with safe boot into the safe mode (press and hold shift while pressing the on-button, hold it until a status bar appears under the apple). Try to reproduce the problem. If the problem doesn't occur in the safe mode, it's maybe a problem with the launch agents and the launch daemons (they are deactivated in safe mode) and the following will probably help you: Restart your Mac in the normal mode. In the finder, go to your HD > library > caches. Delete everthing in this folder (not the folder itself), do the same with extensions and compositions. Still in the library, re-name the folder "LaunchAgents" to "LaunchAgents.old", re-name "LaunchDaemons" to "LaunchDaemons.old". Re-start your mac, empty your paperbin and once again try to reproduce the problem."

i tried that and it seemed to work for a while, but then it ejected again. Besides, I needed some of the programs in the LaunchAgents and LauchDaemons folders, and they don't seem to have anything to do with the HD. I also get "ejects" when I plug my Amazon Kindle 2.0 into a 3.0 Hub.

There really doesn't seem to be any common factor that anyone can identify, other than maybe some sort of power management issue, and it does occur even with older OS versions.

Here's some more info about how I solved the issue I was experiencing. These are the steps I used to identifiy the problem area.

1) Connected my WD 1T external drive directly to my iMac and continued to have the problem.

2) I ordered new cable for my WD HD and connected the HD directly to my iMac. Had 1 week of problem free connection.

3) I now connected my HD to my Bolse 7 port USB 3 hub and the problem returned. (Note: I had originally connected the hub to the iMac using a USB extension cable because the cable that came with the hub was too short to reach my iMac)

4) I ordered and new longer cable to connect the hub to my iMac and have not had a problem since.

Conclusion: My problem was caused by cable issues and not the WD HD or Mavericks.

I Hope this helps.

Thanks. That does clarify completely what you have done.

I have one extra 3.0 cable which I'll try connecting from the HD to the Mac directly, and leave the hub out of it for now. As I mentioned, the hub cable itself is hardwired, although that could still be the problem, especially since I have another identical 3.0 hub to which my Kindle 2.0 was attached using a 2.0 cable, and that also had the eject problem. So, the common factor here could be the 3.0 hubs and/or their hardwired cables which connect to the Mac.

i'll give it some time, see what happens, and report back.

Well, that didn't take long. Hard drive connected with new 3.0 cable directly to MacBook, and disk ejected improperly overnight when computer in Sleep Mode.

there was no activity on the Cosole log between the time I put the computer to sleep and the time I awakened it.

But these are among the first messages I get on awakening, indicating that the disk has been or is being ejected:

7/30/14 9:18:26.000 AM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

7/30/14 9:18:26.000 AM kernel[0]: disk1s2: media is not present.

7/30/14 9:18:26.000 AM kernel[0]: hfs: unmount initiated on MyBook on device disk1s2

7/30/14 9:18:26.000 AM kernel[0]: jnl: disk1s2: close: journal 0xffffff803b39bc20, is invalid.  aborting outstanding transactions

7/30/14 9:18:26.580 AM fseventsd[44]: disk logger: failed to open output file /Volumes/MyBook/.fseventsd/00000000006cc6ed (No such file or directory). mount point /Volumes/MyBook/.fseventsd

There doesn't appear to be any clue in those messages as to why the HD ejects, just that it has done so.

I so sorry Ken that the solution that worked for me didn't help you . This ejection thing is such a frustrating pain in the ..s. It seems that the solutions that work for some don't work for others. I wish Apple would address this issue as there are apparently many frustrated users out there .

I'm curious, you mentioned that you used a new cable. Was it actually a "new" cable or a different cable that you had on hand and did you try different USB ports on you Mac to rule out a bad USB port?

Good luck

Thanks for your concern, Mikey. It's not, of course, the worst thing in the Mac computer world. Try kernel panics, for example...

Anyway, it was, in fact, a new 3.0 cable from Amazon, and I did plug it into the other USB port where previously I had been connecting my iPad (which doesn't like a hub, even a powered hub, at least not for charging. So I don't think it's either a problem with a cable or with a port, unless both ports are bad, and they seem to be working well otherwise with my other USB devices.

It remains a mystery, but apparently a very widespread problem, spanning many different Macs and OSes. One would think or hope that Apple would try to find a cause and a solution.

Brand new iMac27" (mid 2014). This problem went away entirely when I used a powered usb hub (a few years old, belkin, usb2.0) to connect my external drives. I figured that the powering of the drives was the thing that the machine didnt like. Also worked fine with a desktop disk that operated on its own power. Recently, my job purchased a hub for me, since the one i was using was one that I own. The new hub appears nicer and more powerful than the old belkin and it has a usb 3.0 connection. The problem returned with this new hub. Maybe the usb2.0 powered is why the old one worked, but that may be an undesirable tradeoff for some users. SOMEONE MUST have tested this!!... if not, the apple folks SHOULD!

Just a note on my experience... I'm running 10.9.4 with two LaCie external disks.  They were ejected every time I put the computer to sleep and woke up, and I had to restart to see them again.  This happened both with my old 2008 MacBook and a brand new (August 2014) Mac Mini, though it was never a problem under Snow Leopard.  I spent a day trying a bunch of recommended actions from various posts, including deleting the System Configuration folder as described above, which didn't work by itself.

What I finally found to work reliably is:

- install Jettison

- disable automatic sleep in Preferences; use Jettison's "eject and sleep now" setting to put the computer to sleep

- upon wakeup, wait for Jettison's message and unplug the USB connection to the hub that has the disks attached

- wait a few seconds and plug it back in.  Jettison remounts both disks, and I'm good to go, for two days now with now problems.

I have to say this was a pain in the butt.  Mavericks was a complete disaster for my older machines.   It does work reasonably well on the new Mini except for this ejection problem, which seems to have been around now for over two years  (in Mountain Lion too) with no help from Apple.  I have been an Apple fan boy since the original Mac came out, but I seriously considered a Win 7 computer this time.  Larry Ellison is not my favorite person, but he got it right when he said that the Apple-without-Steve experiment has already been done, with bad results.

Robster50 This solved my problem, thanks for all the help...

For anyone using my solution, if it works then put your old SystemConfig file into trash and empty it.

So far my system is still continuing to behave itself normally thank heavens and I feel really bad for those of you that are still having problems.

This is an issue Apple really should do something about.

Robin

I had not had a single incident for months, but all of a sudden yesterday I started getting multiple ejections per day. Any ideas what might have happened? Should I simply try Robin's solution again?

I can't find the original post by Robin (Robster50), only all the references to it, but here are the instructions, again. I don't know how I missed them earlier:

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.

Thank you, Robin. i did this last night, and after almost 24 hours of using the computer and/or having it in sleep mode, no disk ejections at all!

After I rebooted, the SystemConfiguration folder appeared unchanged from before, so I saved it on an external drive and deleted it again. Then I rebooted again, and the MacBook Pro booted up as if i were a new user entirely--clean desktop, new user icon, etc. So I manually replaced the SystemConfiguration folder I had saved, changed the name of the computer again, slightly, rebooted, and all was back to normal, but with a completely new SystenConfiguration folder containing only a few items. I had to go into system preferences to re-set up power preferences, etc., but otherwise the system was, and is, working perfectly, and maybe the problem is permanently solved.

I wonder whether simply removing some of the old plist files from that folder--the ones left over from the previous upgrades of computer and OS--would also do the trick. I'm thinking especially of the power management plist file that was in that folder, and which in my case was very old. We'll never know.

In any event, if this is the solution for most people, Apple should have it very visible and available to all AppleCare support people, and maybe Apple should even include a script for these actions to be used when people upgrade computers.

Ken

I spoke too soon.

About an hour afetr I posted above, I go a disk ejection notice.

I guess this problem must be multifactorial. I may try Robin´s method again, and do it exactly the way Apple said to do it, without improvising. I had changed the name of the computer back to the original, and maybe that had something to do about it. I´ll report back.

I really think the problem is in the cables. Since I connected with good new cables I have not had one disk ejection since my original post on 7/29.

I think if the problem existed with the Mac OX, by now Apple would have shown us a fix. Again, buy a new cable or as many needed to connect to the Mac. I bought 2 new quality cables from Amazon because my external drive is connected to my iMac through a Version 3 USB hub.

Good luck because I know how frustrating this can be.