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"Disk Not Ejected Properly" persists in Mavericks 10.9.1

I was hoping that Mavericks 10.9.1 would solve my "Disk Not Ejected Properly" problem that started with Mavericks. No such luck. Are others having this problem?

Notes-OTHER, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Dec 18, 2013 7:31 AM

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Posted on Jan 1, 2014 10:37 AM

Yes, this is continuing for me as well. I went through th suggestion of SMC and NVRAM reset to no avail. I even thought reformatting the external drive might be worth a try and that did not help either. This is highly annoying as it is my external Time Machine drive.

45 replies

May 12, 2014 11:01 PM in response to DailyBacon

Help!! Apple please fix this. I'm on a late 2013 15" retina MBP and my USB3.0 RAID external drive keeps disconnecting after 10-20 seconds of being plugged in. I can't even transfer files fast enough before it force ejects the drive but gives me the "DISK NOT EJECTED PROPERLY" popup. This is beyond annoying since I cannot access any of my files in the RAID. I have 6-7 other portable external drives that are all fine and don't disconnect. This never happened before Mavericks....


My RAID is 12TB (4 x 3TB Western Digital Drives), both USB ports keep giving me the error. I have both "put hard disks to sleep" options unchecked in system preferences. Still not working 😠 !!!!

Aug 2, 2014 10:53 PM in response to DailyBacon

I am using a an external hard drive called "G Drive Mobile with Thunderbolt" 1TB Thunderbolt/USB3 and I keep getting "DISC NOT EJECTED PROPERLY" while its at work backing up for Time Machine. in Energy Saver I Unchecked "Put Hard disks to Sleep when possible" while Battery and Power Adaptor., but the message of "DISC NOT EJECTED PROPERLY" keeps coming back after a while that the external drive is connected.


Please fix this problem.


I am using latest mavericks as of today OS X 10.9.4, Macbook Pro of late 2013 15" 2.6 GHZ INTEL CORE I7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3.

Oct 20, 2014 7:59 AM in response to DailyBacon

RE: New Mac Pro (late 2013, 6 core, 64GB DRAM, 1TB Internal Flash Drive) with LaCie externals: 2x3TB, 1x1TB (USB3), and 2x12TB LaCie 2BIG (each RAID 0 on Thunderbolt 2).


The 12TB drives were behaving perfectly when brand new (about 3 weeks old now). Then, Final Cut Pro with a certain MOTIONVFX.com plug-in occasionally caused my system to crash and reboot automatically. 😟 As a result, finder prefs (minimally) got corrupted and I couldn't even dup or delete a file or folder. PLUS, eventually, the 12's would no longer sleep with the computer and then get ejected when the Mac slept for an extended period of time and when the Mac woke up, it produced the dreaded, "DISK NOT EJECTED PROPERLY" message for BOTH 12's.


I tried everything: zapping PRAM, resetting SMC, rebooting, repairing permissions...Nothing worked. LaCie: No help, although they offered to send new Thunderbolt cables.


I had the same drive-not-sleeping problem with my Mac Mini for a while, and that inexplicably went away recently.


Sooooo... Here's how mine got fixed. Hope it works for you...


Last night there was a car accident (somewhere) at 2:45AM and for 2-1/2 hours we had a power outage in the entire area. At 6AM I woke the computer and the drives were once again working perfectly (and not getting improperly ejected).


The one thing I hadn't tried was shutting down the Mac PRO for an extended period (probably the same extended period of simple sleep that caused the ejection). The Mac Mini's drive-sleep problem probably also went away when it was powered down recently for lack of use.


So try it: Power-down for at least 2 hours.

Oct 22, 2014 5:12 PM in response to LaraCroft_NYC

I have a new iMac with an SSD and WD external drive for Time Machine backups. I was having the same intermittent problem with the disk ejecting after a long sleep period. I found an answer on a user board named Whirlpool.net.au. The problem is that the WD external drives have a preactivated sleep timer that isn't recognized by OS X. When my iMac would wake up, it thought the drive was disconnected, since it didn't know that the WD firmware put it into sleep mode. I downloaded the WD drive utility program and turned off the built in disk sleep timer. I then turned on the OS X Energy Saver switch to "put hard disks to sleep when possible". This way, when the iMac is in sleep mode, it puts the external drive to sleep as well. When the iMac wakes up, it knows that the external drive needs to be awakened as well. So far, five days with no ejects.

Nov 4, 2014 5:33 PM in response to mja12

I had this same problem for a long time and did much research and tried many suggested solutions until I came upon the solution that totally worked for me.


I discovered that the problem had nothing to do with the system software. It turns out the the problem resides in the USB cables. I replaced all my USB cables from hard drive to the USB hub and from the hub to my iMac with brand new quality cables. I have not had 1 ejection now for the last 4 months.

I was running Mavericks when I swapped out my cables and just recently upgraded to Yosemite. No hard drive ejections or failing to wake from sleep.


Good luck to everyone.

Nov 13, 2014 5:07 PM in response to DailyBacon

It's not your drive; it's not your software--it's your logic board. I have a 13-Inch MacBook Pro, Late 2014, Retina display and a WD 8 TB Thunderbolt Duo external drive. From the beginning, I got the "disc not ejected properly" at irregular intervals. After eight months of it I got disgusted enough to visit an Apple Store and complain. My computer was sent someplace and came back after four days with a new logic board. And the problem is solved.


Apparently Apple simply installed, in who knows how many or which models of their computers, defective logic boards, which don't provide consistent power such as will maintain a connection to an external drive. Too bad. Make them fix it.

"Disk Not Ejected Properly" persists in Mavericks 10.9.1

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