Disk not ejected properly

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I wanted to reply to this thread and its followers with my experience. I started having "Disk not ejected properly" popups on my mid-2015 iMac 27" Retina for my external firewire Time Machine drive. This Mac is running Yosemite. It seemed occasional at first but then started happening very frequently. My first assumption was the drive so I changed cables with limited success; then I suspected a problem with the firewire bus on the drive so swapped the hard drive into a newer drive enclosure. Everything I tried seemed to work initially - until I stopped use of the iMac for the day and then went back to it later to see it had happened again... when I woke the iMac from sleep.

When I noticed the drive that "improperly ejected" was usually still mounted on the desktop, I searched these communities to see if anyone else had this problem and found this and other threads. Based on what I read and found people talking about the unchecking the option to "put hard drives to sleep when possible."

So I unchecked the option. It's been 5 days now and there have been no more "Disk not ejected properly" alerts so far. I think modifying that one checkbox in my system preferences has resolved it.

So, perhaps by sharing my apparent solution it will help someone else. I'm thankful in my case it seems to have been this simple.

Thanks

JScott has mentioned that he's seeing the DNEP error with Firewire-connected drives. The thread has gotten too long to easily read all 33 pages, but I thought I'd ask if anyone following has seen it with Thunderbolt-connected drives.

Since upgrading to macOS Sierra, my USB connected drives have mostly been error free, but I now see the DNEP message for my TB drives every time after my iMac 5K has been sleeping overnight (sleeping it for an hour or two during the work day does not seem to do it). Only once have I experienced an actual problem other than the annoyance of deleting the error messages. On one occasion, Sierra somehow created an alias for my external drive, and I suspect that it was related to this DNEP issue. That changed the name of the drive's Mount Point ("Data 1" was changed to "Data 1 1", and that name change caused confusion for several applications that were set to create backups to that drive.

Anyone seeing the DNEP with Thunderbolt-connected drives?

Actually, my FireWire drive is connected to my 2015 iMac via Thunderbolt (failed to include that detail, I see). I use an Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire connector. So, yes, technically my drive is Thunderbolt connected.

Since I posted my update on January 7th, I have seen a few more DNEP errors, though not as many as I had been seeing in December. They do occur after overnight or longer sleep, not after brief sleep, like Milleron's report. I have not experienced seeing an alias getting created. I am still on Yosemite but will upgrade to Sierra one of these weekends.

There's been much talk of this issue going away with an upgrade to Sierra. For me, that is not the case. My mid-2009 Macbook Pro running Yosemite was handling my 3 external LaCie drives just fine. 2 are daisy-chained Firewire, and 1 is USB. None of these drives have their own power-supplies, but are powered by the data ports (travel-drives). They've always treated me great.
Last month I bought a new MacBook Pro and migrated my system from my old machine. The new machine came with El Cap and the involuntary dismounts (also a mtn. biking term) started right away. I can get a dozen error messages on my desktop. I read this thread and was inspired by the theory that Sierra was the fix, so I jumped on that upgrade. Nothing has changed. Interestingly, it seems to only be the Firewire drives (now running through a Thunderbolt adapter) that are having the issue. The USB drive seems to be solid. I have tried both suggested fixes: Energy Saver "Put HDs to sleep...." setting; and the Spotlight, adding drives to Privacy list...with a system restart for good measure...to no avail. I have Time Machine disabled (using it manually, periodically). Since my machine is new, I'm going to call Apple support and try to get a fix, or at least some acknowledgment, right from the horse's mouth..

"Plus one" on the Sierra doesn't fix the problem. Neither does moving to a new Macbook Pro.

I have a brand new, MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016) with touch bar, etc. that came stock with macOS Sierra (upgraded now to ver. 10.12.4.) I get 14 DNEP errors on my desktop every time I come back to my desk and wake my machine. I have one 2TB Seagate GoFlex Desk Media drive that I use for Time Machine backups.

C'mon Apple. This is an ISSUE. Please address it.

BTW, this also happened on my last MacBook Pro, which was a 2013 model. This is an OS issue. It is not drive or cable or even Apple machine version dependent. Please put some unimaginably smart engineer (I know you have many of them) on this and find the bug. It's certainly not hard to reproduce, and you have about a thousand of us that have the problem who would love to test it for you.

Please? Please, oh please.

I ran into the same problem. In my case, the culprit was the type of surge suppressor I was using. This is the kind that turns off power to all the the outlets when the main outlet senses that the device plugged into it has powered off. When my iMac, plugged into the main outlet, went to sleep, this was sufficient to turn off power to all the other outlets, including those that my external drives were plugged into. After I plugged those drives into a second surge suppressor, they now remain powered on when the iMac is sleeping and I no longer get the "Disk not ejected properly" message. An added bonus is that the drives spin down during sleep, whether or not I tick the "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" checkbox in Energy Saver, and whether or not I select the "Automatic" setting on the drives' three-position on/off switch.

If I connect my USB hard drive with my PCIe USB 3 card, the problem always happens, despite I have tried all the suggestions.

However, if I connect it with my USB 2 (on the back or front of my Mac Pro 5.1), the issue gone and no more message pop up.

Same issue on an 27" IMAC Late 2012. I have several external drives attached via USB 2 and 3 and when the system sleeps, the drives will do one of two things.. Either Go to sleep as they are supposed to or get disconnected with the "Disk not ejected properly" message when it wakes up.. Lots of data and very worried it will corrupt if this keeps up.

Same issue with a 27" iMAC, 1 week old.

Same issue, iMac Late 2013

Same here, 2007 iMac running Mavericks.
I have 4 external USB drives consisting of 7 terabytes of HD space.
After every sleep it's the "disk not ejected properly".
I have no problem installing 3rd party software to do a task, but NOT to fix an obvious bug from Apple!.

I get this error as well, and my two external SSD drives are practically useless under Mavericks. Many freezes during read/writes. Have had several pretty critical issues with Mavericks so far- really regret upgrading. My fault for upgrading so early, I almost never do that. Paying for it now. Hopefully a forthcoming patch will fix at least the external drive problems, this is a real killer.

Update: at least it seems Mavericks has not corrupted the data on my SSD's. I have been able to mount them on my wife's Air (w/ Mountain Lion) and copy the disks over the network. Not ideal at all, but at least this saves me days of downloading backups from Backblaze. And the SSD's are still viable.

iMac 27" late 2012

Message was edited by: Bitmatt

In my case suddenly my external drive got ejected and message appears `Disk not ejected properly'. But only few times, and no problem while sleeping or at wakeup.
Use NoSleep extension https://code.google.com/p/macosx-nosleep-extension/downloads/detail?name=NoSleep -1.3.3.dmg

It will avoid ur macbook from sleep while u close the lid. Its very helpful and extremely simple to use. I know this is not the solution of the problem but In case it may help u a little bit. I am using this from a long time, never had any issues with it, small and free.

This problem originally appeared with 10.8.5. Apple released a patch shortly thereafter and it resolved the issue for my eSata drives connected via a Thunderbolt hub, but my USB 3 drives still are affected. No major data loss for me but folder aliases on the desktop would lose its icon, which obviously shouldn't happen.

The workaround in 10.8.5 is to disallow the machine to sleep.

Use feedback and let Apple know.