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Randomly ejecting USB hard disks

There are quite a lot discussions about failing usb drives on this community. A common problem for external USB hard disks is that they will unmount (eject) randomly. This unmounting will cause corrupt data, sometimes even a corrupt disk. Some example discussions are:



https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2151621?answerId=24997422022#24997422022&ac_cid=tw123456#24997422

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5486533?answerId=24974730022#24974730022


Possible causes discussed here are many. The one I think is most reasonable is a bad controller chip that connects the USB port with the SATA port of the disk. A nice document about this can be found here:


https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6121


I'd like to know if there are certain controller models that are most error prone. If you are experiencing the problems mentioned above, please post


  • the brand
  • model
  • date of purchase


of your external USB disk. If you can, please take a look into the enclosure and post the name of the controller chip, too. Having some statistic, we could avoid buying disks/enclosures causing trouble for so many users.


Thanks!

Posted on Feb 26, 2014 12:18 PM

Reply
38 replies

Aug 16, 2014 6:29 AM in response to dinky2

After almost a week another disconnect. After some experimenting I suspect the cable to the problem disk is a bit crappy. E.g. it took a while before the system recognized I reconnected the disk or it did not find it at all, or only after numerous attempts. When I replaced the cable response was immediate. So its worthwhile trying these kind of thing if you have the problem.

Oct 27, 2014 8:42 PM in response to mammy

Thats good to know that it is somewhat stable.l my lacie drives are older, so I dont have thunderbolt for them, but they are too old for usb3. Usb2 should be fine, but apparently not because of my random ejects. I might just have to bite the bullet and just get a much newer lacie drive. If it still boots Apple is going to hear some choice words from me. :/ i apologize for the typos. Ironically my ipad is not letting me select my errors to change. On that note, my current problem (since I gave up on the drives) is that my IMAC will randomly restart. And it happens to people often enough that it is called a sleep wake error. How Apple is still in business is really beyond me.

Mar 9, 2015 5:51 AM in response to dinky2

Im running a 4 year old Mac Mini with OS 10.6.8

Drive 1 Vantec 200GB

Drive 2 WD 1 terrabyte

Drive 3 WE 1 terrabyte

Drive 4 Seagate 1 terrabyte

Drive 5 Seagate 3 terrabyte


All has been running fine and I dont usually turn my mac off and its never in sleep mode and I dont use Time machine. The last drive was added a year ago and all has been running fine. Lately the drives all dismount at the same time and then remount by themselves. Drive 4 will not mount the Mac. Drive 1 stopped with message to initialize. Drive 2 and Drive 3 stopped mounting. All this within the last 2 weeks. Drive 5 still works fine, but it still dismounts and remounts by itself with the message box about dismounting drive improperly. All the drives are connected to the mini by D-Link hub model DUB-H7. Can Hubs wear out? For all the drives to dismount at the same time has to be a connection of the hub or a USB problem with the Mac.

Jun 13, 2015 5:16 PM in response to Lars Engel

Just purchased a WD 1TB My PAssport for Mac


Have a macbook mac os x 10.6.8


recently broke my older passport which was working perfectly fine then naturally purchased the new passport from WD. Spontaneously will eject immediately upon inserting into usb port?


Dont know what to try been reading the thread changing energy settings, calling WD and getting a replacement, and calling apple. Nothing seems to work.


Any ideas would help?

Thanks

Randomly ejecting USB hard disks

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