Q: Disk not ejected properly

I am now having a problem with a pretty full external Seagate drive where it was previously intermittent.

That 1TB drive now gets chucked off the system almost every time I wake my retina iMac from sleep (Yosemite up to date). However, it never shows the bad message we are used to. The disk just isn't there on the desktop, or it is. It's there one time in ten I'd say. I have to unplug the usb and replug, then it shows up.

What has changed at my end?

That drive is recently nearly full, so it'll be slow to check.

So I suggest the drive's directory is not found and collated in sufficient time so it gets booted off the system or just ignored.

Anyone have any thoughts on that?

Thoughts from Apple at any point in this thread would be the most welcome of any thoughts.

(Previously in this thread I noted this drive as the one that was unaffected. Ho hum...)

Thanks, but it is deeper than that. Your advice is correct. However, it does not stop some drives (most drives) from getting booted off, or at least a message saying they have been booted when they have not.

Thanks for the info.

Perhaps amongst us we can find a 3rd party solution with enough info where Apple has found NIL with 24 pages here of this problem.

24 forum pages of one problem is impressive. In the bad way.

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!!! 

I'm going crazy, imac retina 5k and new usb 3 seagate 2tb i got ever "Disk Not Ejected Properly" telephone support will not admit the bug, told me that the disc is defective. I have no words...

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 :-/

This is a shot in the dark, but I keep reading problems about this... Who here used Migration Assistant?

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. 

update - we will see....

Please report back, people, or we don't solve things...