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Anyone else having problems with external disks unmounting randomly/suddenly on Mavericks?

I have been having an issue with Mavericks unmounting my external USB disk suddenly, followed by a Finder notification that the disk was ejected improperly. This has only started since upgrading to 10.9. I have tried unchecking "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" in System Prefs, but it has not helped. Weirdly, the drive icon does not disappear from the desktop when this happens, so I don't know if it's actually ejecting, or if the system just thinks it is. At any rate, it does appear to be a bug.

MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9), 8GB RAM

Posted on Oct 30, 2013 10:51 PM

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218 replies

Nov 7, 2013 7:33 PM in response to realtwang

I'm still running Mountain Lion, which has had the same problem with ejecting external drives with a message saying it had not been disconnected first. Turned out it was a faulty upgrade in early September. They finally released a patch which settled things down for a couple of weeks, but now it's happening again.


I have all new equipment - new Mac Mini, new external drives (Seagate, one powered, one unpowered).


So I also cannot see that this is because of faulty cards. I have been holding off upgrading to Mavericks on the grounds of "better the devil you know".


Not happy. all very well saying that random problems have been common for years, but this isn't random - it's frequent, on new equipment.

Nov 7, 2013 7:44 PM in response to kharisma

kharisma but now it's happening again..........So I also cannot see that this is because of faulty cards.



Seen it countless times, .....9 times out of 10 this occurrence is a faulty SATA card. Owned many 100s of HD and still own just under 100 of them.


You also just answered you own question with "now its happening again"


But if you dont believe me, thats ok 😉

Nov 7, 2013 7:54 PM in response to PlotinusVeritas

Brand new equipment less than two months old.

Mac mini replaced after three weeks, so this one is only one month old.


Powered drive only two months old (Seagate).


Problem started with upgrade of ML released early September.

Stopped for a couple of weeks after recent patch.


Now it's happening again.


So the SATA cards on both the Mac minis are bad ... is that what you're saying?

Nov 7, 2013 8:51 PM in response to kharisma

I may have the solution to my own problem - about a week ago I bought a powered hub (USB3).


The powered external drive (USB3) is plugged directly into the computer (also USB3), but the unpowered drive (USB2) has been plugged into the hub.


I know from experience that some devices don't perform well through a hub. I'm going to leave the small drive unplugged unless I need it, and see if that helps.

Nov 7, 2013 9:54 PM in response to kharisma

Keep us posted on what you find. For me, it happens without a hub, with the drive directly hooked to the computer. And PlotinusVeritas, thanks, but it would be the coincidence of the century if a drive that was working perfectly an hour before suddenly went bad the very moment I installed Mavericks. So thanks for the input, but you're mistaken on this one.

Nov 11, 2013 2:55 PM in response to eM_NL

Mybe another random event but


I read through this


C10. "Error: (-50) Creating directory"

or "error ... while creating the backup folder."


trying to fix this and my timemachine problem. By chance I changed my partitioning from the GUID to the apple partition table and my problems stopped. The drive that randomly disconnected over and over stayed connected and completed a full time machine backup. So far this has fixed the problem and the computers seems to no longer be locking when the drive is connected and disk util is functioning normally.


fingers are crossed.......

Anyone else having problems with external disks unmounting randomly/suddenly on Mavericks?

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