Yosemite ejects external drives

What's working for me at the moment... overnight and so far today is not to let my MacPro OR the monitor sleep. I put up a very active and very dim screen saver. Buddy of mine at an Apple Store speculated that it's something in the Energy Management software. But I'm pretty sure most of us figured this out already. So many different configs here to be hardware.

This appears to be an issue with directory structure and data. The files are general fine, however there's a conflict somewhere which will incorrectly duplicate data nodes or show nodes being present when they aren't. It seems Spotlight can cause a conflict with data writing to the external disk. This is why in some cases disabling spotlight will help. This is a poor solution if one ever wants to search a multi-terabyte drive however.

It's a clear bug in the OS and a fix would be appreciated.

Other bugs... Finder crashes a GREAT DEAL with dragging and dropping. Multiple items can become incorrectly highlighted and cause a crash. Due to the progress bar for EACH copied file now, the finder windows update causing selections to become inaccurate. One must WAIT for copying to be complete and PRAY there's no write conflict at the same time before performing any other tasks.

Frankly, the Finder in Yosemite is pretty bad. Not that it has been "good" since 10.5.8, but 10.10.x's Finder is just horrible Apple.

Just add me to the list as well.

Since upgrading to Yosemite, the external USB disks are spontaneous ejected, while working on them. Programs like word and virtual PC, which I need to work with, are crashing because of this. I never let my disks sleep, turning of spotlight indexing (spotlight annoying window, which can not be moved or resized is another problem) did not make a difference.

I think Scott has a good point. After I ran DiskWarrior on the external disk, and rebuild my directory, the problem did not occur for som days. The Finder keeps messing things up. Using Mac since the eighties, I can only conclude that quality control in Apple is declining steadily since Steve Jobs died. Pity.😟

Upgraded to Yosemite 10.10.3 from Mavericks 10.9.5 about 3 weeks ago. Everything seemed to go ok until that last few days where I am getting the "Disk not ejected properly" message to the point that I am unable to really use my external drives. I have reset SMC and PRAM and done a Apple hardware test (which was ok). This has been happening on my Thunderbolt Western Digital drives connected directly to the Mac. I have not tested usb connected drives, but will

I am trying to shut my iMac (27" mid 2011) down and it is taking forever!!!! Wish I knew what it was doing. It has been over 15 minutes already. Once it shuts down, I will try the Spotlight and energy setting tricks.

I wanted to provide a brief update on my issue. I had noticed that most of the problems seemed related to my 5 drive Thunderbolt chain. So I unplugged it from my iMac and plugged it in to my MacBook Pro, also running Yosemite, but the history of the desk top and laptop are very different from a long time ago. Somewhat to my surprise, I got the "Disk not ejected properly" very quickly. This result got me wondering about cables and hardware on the Thunderbolt chain. I am slowly building the chain drive by drive while waiting a couple of days and use to see if the dreaded "Disk Not Ejected Properly' comes back. So far I have three drives reconnected (all with new cables) and everything seems ok for about 96 hours. Knock on wood.

My conjecture is I have a cable/hardware problem on the chain and thus far does not seem to be a Yosemite problem.

FYI, one of the first things I did was replace all the cables here with brand new cables.... In fact, I even went so far as to buy a separate uninterruptible power supply for ONLY my external drives.....no help. The issue will still occur at times.

Quite honestly, in addition to conflicts created by Spotlight, it appears to also be related to some power management issue with the PORTS on the machine. How long a chain is, or whether a chain exists, seems to make no difference. The OS cuts power to the ports, or at least reports power as being cut, causing drives to be reported as ejected. This was confirmed a bit when I had an INTERNAL drive reported as being ejected - which, until this issue, I had never seen before.

I doubt it's a cable issue at all.

I'm using the same cables I always have. No drive has previously done this before Yosemite. I plugged the same drive into a PC using Windows for a week and it never once was ejected. All the accounts here on ejections are occurring when the Macs are not in use and the drives are not being accessed, that is, when machines go to sleep, even though the drives are set to never sleep and energy saver is not on. There is something wrong with Yosemite. My external drive continues eject intermittently overnight whether I have used my iMac the night before or not. But it never happens while I am actually working -- whether I'm accessing the drive or not.

It's suspect time for a class action against Apple for damaging our drives.

ps

on a related matter, just last week, for the first time in 3 years, my screensaver suddenly won't load the usual folder of photos it always has --- seems thousands of users are suddenly having the very same issue.... Yosemite and the new Apple photo app are apparently the culprit. It breaks your screen saver.

So far with 3 of the 5 drives re-attached to the Thunderbolt chain, the system is stable without any further "Disk not ejected properly" during a little bit of stress testing and typical use.

The symptoms of my "DNEP or Disk not ejected properly" were different. I never had DNEP on wake up from sleep, but most commonly with drive use, particularly large file transfers and once one drive on the chain went, the others would commonly follow.

I could be wrong on my theory, but will continue to test and add drives back. It could be one of the Thunderbolt ports on the drives is bad as well.

I am pretty sure cables have nothing to do with the problem.

I do not have a thunderbolt port, so I cannot judge that.

With me the problem happens to USB disks, both a USB 3 external disk (with its own power supply) and a USB stick (which doesn't have a cable!).

I worked with these disks in exactly the same way as with Maverick. Nothing changed, but upgrading to Yosemite. And suddenly they are ejected several times a day.

It has nothing to do with sleep, because I am working on the computer when it happens. (the disk almost immediatly also re-appear!!) Actually it never happens when I am away from the computer (and when the screen goes to sleep, I do not dare to let my Harddisk sleep)

Absolutely. If one reads through all 7 pages of this thread there are all types of machines, all types of drives, over both Thunderbolt and USB. This is a software problem... we just haven't nailed down exactly what it is yet.

Here's a follow-up on my situation. (2013 MacPro, 4x external USB3 drive bay) Doing a CMD-I and looking at the permissions for my external drives I noticed they only had:

system R/W

wheel R/W

everyone R only

From what I can gather "wheel" is kind of a catchall that should include root and administrator accounts. Somehow I think the ACLs for "wheel" became corrupted but resetting ACLs from recovery mode didn't solve anything (as noted earlier in this thread). So I manually added two more permission levels to my external drives so now they look like this:

admin R/W

MyMainUserAccnt (Me) R/W

system R/W

wheel R/W

everyone R only

I haven't had a spontaneous eject in a few weeks now. (I still can't let my Mac sleep... but at least I can let my monitor sleep again):

Turn off display after 1hr

X - Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when display is off

X - Wake for network access

X - Start up automatically after a power failure

Clearly not a longterm or ideal solution...

I just want to chime in as another voice (actually, two) having this &%$# problem. I have my Desktop go to sleep after a certain amount of time. After trying the Spotlight "cure", it worked for a short while. I put the Mac to sleep manually last night, and they ejected several times over night.

My husband is having a similar problem with his external drive for his Macbook Pro. It's completely ludicrous that Apple knows this problem is happening as is doing nothing to stop it.

Hi all,

An update from my side: since my last post I have used my external HD (1TB Western Digital Passport) very extensively and intensively, copying, reading, mounting images...and everything has worked fine. I consider the issue resolved for me but I still have spotlight turned off on the EHD.

Hope you all can also solve this issue!

Well, I had to open my fat trap yesterday about not having eject problems for a few weeks. Woke up this morning to ejected disks in my USB3 enclosure. They won't even stay mounted for 10 seconds at this point... continue to spontaneously eject.

My Mac genius buddy (whose been helping me with this for weeks) said "Try plugging another drive into another port someplace and just leave it plugged in to see if that one ejects as well. While clearly other people are having your same problem, other people everywhere are having every single kind of problem you can imagine at some point. Statistically speaking, it would not be out of the question that a few hundred people have enclosures or drives that are misbehaving and passing it down their peripheral chain."

I have a few standalone external drives so I plugged them in as well. They STAYED mounted. I hadn't tried this before. So, I'm ordering a new 4x drive bay for my other disks. We shall see.

I might be on to something here.

How many of you who are experiencing this problem are using an external volume for Time Machine? My external enclosure (seems to be) is stable without my Time Machine drive installed.

I have two externals. Neither use for time machine. Only the lightening cable one ejects with Yosemite.