Yosemite ejects external drives

Turned off Spotlight on that drive and seemed to eliminate the problem; however I will test this more to see if it is consistant.

OOk, so I've spoken to the apple guy and we're setting up a call for tomorrow or Saturday and we'lol go over everything. I've already given him all my basic iMac specs, plus the brand model and capacity of the particular drive that seems to be getting ejected even if it's virtually.

Now here's something interesting... I upgraded to the latest release of OS X it ends in a "2", and I have not seen one instance of it ejecting the same drive in four days. Keeping my fingers crossed, but since I'm having issues with Apple mail, and an occasional screen freeze, I'm thinking I will have to bite the bullet and do a full fresh install of Yosemite as soon as I figure out how to archive mail so I don't lose it and the attachments associated with both incoming and outgoing mail. Major programs are relatively easy to reinstall, just wondering about all those smaller utilities.

Meanwhile I'm going to see if the apple guy can help me with the mail, he said once we get all this info and diagnostic stuff done, he'd try or have another senior tech take a look.

MIke

I've had the random-eject problems with 10.2.2, FWIW, so the dot release didn't completely fix it. As a reminder, mine happened during sleep, not during long transfers.

I tried the Spotlight do-not-search workaround, as it's just a Time Machine drive, and after 1 day & night, I had no random ejects. Too soon to declare it "fixed", and I know this didn't fix it for others, but it's a glimmer of light.

How strange that my wife, with the same drive, interconnect, and OS version, does not have the same problem on her Mac Pro. So there's a more complex interaction going on that just one item or setting, I fear.

Nice to hear Apple is following up. Fingers crossed.

Hi, Yosemite 10.10.2 is still having this issue on my system.

I have some clues: I'm getting several notification when I wake up my Mac in the morning, like it tried to wake up several times.

Today I looked in console logs and found a series of events that occurred while system *was supposed* to be sleeping:

05/02/15 14:36:25,000 kernel[0]: Wake reason: RTC (Alarm)

05/02/15 14:36:25,000 kernel[0]: The USB device USB3.0 Hub (Port 1 of Hub at 0x15000000) may have caused a wake by issuing a remote wakeup (1)

Seems some USB device is waking up my system... I've found I've checked "Wake-up on LAN" option in energy preferences, maybe it's that, or anyway something waking up my system for some minutes.

Will turn Wake on LAN this night and see what happens.

I suggest you looking in your console logs, it's really easy to find these events as they occur between a specific timeframe you know.

L.

UPDATE:

I've found this information which seems reliable

http://ispire.me/fix-yosemite-rtc-alarm-wakeup-issue/

Read until the end for the quick and easy workaround (turning off auto time-zone and setting).

Update: turning off Wake-on-lan in energy preferences AND disabling automatic time and timezone setting solved my problem with external drive ejects during system sleep. This is probably due one of this two settings, possibly the second one, will test it later again.

I feel somewhat lucky because I recently (8 days ago) installed the OS X 10.10.2 update and two things have happened; I haven't seen one screen freeze and I still haven't had the pop up telling me I unplugged my 2TB USB drive without ejecting it properly. As noted above, last week I was called by Apple Support in regard to my filed bug report, and we set up a a live phone/chat session yesterday where the Apple Tech was on the phone with me for well over an hour, we ran some diagnostics, and I sent both log files and an EtreCheck report. Apple also has a screen share setup (www.ara.apple.com) where they put a cursor on your screen but talk you through doing the actual diagnostics. I'm still not happy with Apple Mail's sluggish performance with Yosemite but that was not this guy's task or specialty. But overall, I was very impressed and the technician was excellent.

I told the Technician that I hadn't hadn't seen the pop-up since going to OS X 10.10.2 and we even tried some forced sleep, but it would not show the ejection. So I have his email and if I do see the popup he wants me to run the diagnostics again and send him the log file. In the meantime, they were going to analyze what I did send them yesterday.

If anyone's seeing the popup, maybe you should send a bug report and perhaps you'll wind up on their que.

Mike

Nope.. False positive.. Unchecking automatic date setting is not preventing wakeup and ejects...

Another data point: Where upgrading to 10.10.2 did NOT fix the problem, adding the offending external Time Machine drive to Spotlight's "do not search" list HAS stopped the problem (incorrect eject upon waking from sleep) from occurring for several days now, whereas before it happened at least once a day. I still have Power Nap enabled as well, which initially seemed to help but did not cure the problem.

I have a segate backup plus 4T connected to my 2009 iMac and it was constantly being ejected when the iMac went to sleep. The drive would not connect again until I unplugged and replugged the drive. UGH. I was not going to do that again and again. I was about to take it back to Costco. This post saved me I believe. I followed the suggestion to remove the drive from Spotlight through the privacy settings in System preferences! It looks good! The drive is still active upon wakeup! Apple should fix this of course, but at least there is an easy work around. Spotlight can never seem to find anything that I want it to find, so at least it is good for something - launching programs, doing math, and turning it off from searching external hard drives so that they will remain connected on wake from sleep!

I'm going to try this with my Verbatim external drive. To be honest, in all the years I've used Macs I never checked out Spotlight in the system pref. Thanks for the detailed explanation of excluding the drive. Keeping my fingers crossed that tomorrow morning my external drive will be on!

Yosemite ejecting hard drives: My 5 week old 5K Retina just will not run the external drives. It is not a Sleep problem. They are ejected almost immediately after connecting or trying to access a photo. The external drives are repeatedly ejected then reconnected, then ejected, reconnected again. It is scary to watch it go down.

I was on the phone with Apple for days, yesterday over 5 hours, and the Support person (the Expert) tried everything: PRAM, Spotlight privacy, partitioning the hard drive, reloaded the OS (twice), completely erasing everything and reloading the OS. Finally, she said for me to go the Repair shop (three hours away. I called the Mac Store and the repair guy said $49 per 30 minutes.) I doubt they can help, they have never heard of this problem.

Also, none of the Support guys at Apple (I spoke to at least 10 of them) had heard of the problem. The sad thing is, I have this old 2009 iMac that runs perfectly, runs CS5, runs the old LR (which the new 5K does not do. It does not run CS5. I am on PS and LR all day, every day.) All of my photographic life is on those external hard drives.

So, what to do? Wait it out? Sell the brand new beautiful horrible 5K? Go to the Repair guy?

hi,

what kind of drives do you use? USB3 Thunderbolt?

It might be an defective cable, when i bought my lacie drive, the cable they delivered with the drive, was defect.

I'm assuming you've tried different cables, plugging into different ports on the back of your iMac, and maybe changing the power supply? Maybe re-routing the cable to make sure it does not go near a power supply (I've seen the electromagnetic interference cause problems with poorly shielded cables in the past)? You also make it sound like you've tried more than one drive?

If it's only one drive, I'd say get a different drive; if it's more than one drive, then it sounds like a faulty USB port/hub in the iMac, which should still be under warranty.

The popup showed up last night and I immediately ran the diagnostic and sent it with my case ID to my Apple contact. He's looking at the file now. So that kinda confirms it for me, OS X 10.10.2 is not a fix for this issue.