Disk Not Ejected Properly macOS Sierra

With me and my WD drive, it's every time the Mac goes to sleep. I've searched around the web and really found nothing promising for a solution except for a script I found on a trusted site, but that didn't work.

My 3 internal drives are fine.

Just one partition on that drive and I only use it for Time Machine.
As for now, I just ignore the error messages. It's probably the best we can do.

What's the significance of the WD software. I assumed it played no part unless launched

MIne's a desktop iMac with Bluetooth keyboard/mouse so unchecking isn't an option

wake for network access is unchecked

WD sleep timer is also off

WD software is counterproductive in mac: the mac OS accessing disks is different than the (Windows designed) WD software accesses. So you better uninstall it, it has kexts and that sort of files installed in OS.

It may have been OK in 10.12.2.. that it is not in ....3 is probably not a system bug but somewhere else in a sort of "conflict" with other software.

If after your actions, it is still the same, you better start a new thread of your own, explain what you did or post a link to this one and post an etrecheck list ( etrecheck.com ). Post the link to the new thread here so that we can find you quickly.

There was no disk eject overnight last night for the first time in a month.

Thinking back, when I bought the WD drive in December 2015, I never installed the WD software until the drive played up a year later. I did install it with each of the last 3 RMA drives including the current one.

I know it's early days but fingers crossed!

Thanks LexiePex. Getting shot of the WD software has probably helped enormously

I've tried a few of the steps recommended on this thread with no success. However, this small problem has now become intermittent without any obvious reason for the improvement. I was getting the spurious messages every morning after having the computer sleep overnight (but not when it slept for a few minutes or hours during the day). Over the last week or two, I've been seeing them only intermittently, perhaps every other day on average. This problem is bizarre, indeed. I'm glad that it's not a serious imposition because the final solution seems out of reach.

Interestingly, the last time I noticed the "not ejected properly" message a couple of years ago, it mysteriously resolved itself just as mysteriously as it arose. Perhaps it's in the process of repeating itself.

My problem has also been the same for a couple years- as soon as I added the external drive. When the computer goes to sleep, I'll always get that error for my WD drive when it wakes up. Tried every fix in the book. It also did it before and after I upgraded the processor (was Early Mac Pro 2009 2.66 Quad, now a 3.46 GHz 6-Core), and on El Capitan & Sierra. Why I'm so happy to have a robust Mac with 4 internal drive bays. This would be a real problem otherwise! I'd do my backups on one of the internal drives, and solve this annoying issue once and for all, but I like to be able to lock the external in a fireproof safe when I'm not around.

The "Wake for Network Access" solved the problem for me. I didn't have this issue until I upgraded the OS. I don't think it was Sierra specifically, but the upgrade process. I remember having this issue with Yosemite, but couldn't remember what I did to solve it.

I started seeing this behavior related to system sleep and disk ejection with OS versions later than Snow Leopard, possibly beginning with Mountain Lion. The only things that have worked for me are to manually eject mounted external drives before putting the system to sleep, which you obviously can't do when the computer is unattended, or to install a little utility called "Mountain" made by appgineers.de. I use Mountain to unmount external drives when the system is going to sleep and to remount them when it is waking.

Hi kahjot, downloaded the app, but not seeing how to set the preferences to have that drive unmount during sleep and then mount again without still getting that "not ejected properly" error message. Do I need to always do this manually?

I have the same problem. It only began after upgrading my Mid 2010 iMac27 from Mavericks to Sierra. I have no issue with being unable to manually eject. 😉 The issue for me is a flash drive that I generally leave plugged into the iMac. After the machine wakes up from sleep I always now have the Disk not Ejected Properly message. Not a big deal but kinda annoying.

I have had the same problem since upgrading. I went through all of the suggestions here and quite a few more with no success. As with others the problem seems to revolve around a Western Digital device, WD 10EAVS in my case. I am not an expert but it appears that the drive is too slow in shutting itself down. I looked at Disc Utility and the WD was about half way down the list of drives so I ejected everything, unplugged and restarted plugging the WD in first. The order of drives changed to put the WD as first external. This seemed to cure the problem for a while but eventually it came back. When I checked Disc Utility again I found the Mac had put them back in the old order. Everything else I have done points to the WD drive being the problem although it is not in itself faulty. Maybe Apple have altered the shut down process in Sierra?

I get this messages sometimes after a cold boot. Initially I thought it was dropbox related as soon after the message appears the dropbox app pops up and I have to re-link it to my machine. I also noted that Carbon Copy Cloner no longer recognised my hard disk as the default source and I have to re-select it again. I ran DiskWarrior and the Apple Disk check and they both reported the drives as clean. A final reboot and everything went back to normal. Weird.

I have the same problem on my 2015 MBP 15" and WD 6TB WDBBGB0060HBK-NESN drive. Whether attached directly to the MBP or via USB3 hub, I still get the Disk Not Ejected Properly error for every partition on my drive. I tried Jettison (yes, I paid for it too), but Jettison doesn't handle 2 users well. My wife's user is always open and we switch between them often, and Jettison ends up coughing up more of its own annoying errors than MacOS does. I've been speaking to the developer by email for several days, but so far nothing has improved.

I even wrote to Western Digital about the problem. Here's what they told me:

As I was looking into this problem, and I noticed that you are actually using Mac OS X Sierra 10.12.5 and System Sleep on Mac OS 10.12 Sierra may cause the computer to stop communicating with attached external USB drives, that's the cause you are seeing "unexpected ejected hard drive" error.

You may disable System Sleep to prevent the issue from occurring again.

Prevent my MBP from ever sleeping... Yeah... right.

Has anyone tried the following hack on the Sierra version of DiskArbitrationAgent?

http://quantumg.blogspot.jp/2015/04/disabling-os-x-device-removal-warnings.html

I also found the following script, but that just looks like a free version of Jettison, which again, didn't help me:

https://github.com/syscl/Fix-usb-sleep

Looking forward to hearing any updates Stefan.

Since High Sierra one out of my three external drives (a Seagate usb3) which has been working perfectly for two years, and is plugged into the same external dock as my WD Time machine drive and WD media drive, started giving me the Disk Not Ejected errors every time my MacBook went to sleep.

I've just clicked through 116 such errors (is there no way of dismissing all of them in one click???) because I forgot to unmount and unplug the drive last night 😟

The disk is fine according to Disk Utility and it never fails to spin up and mount properly so I don't think it's a PSU issue.

Regards

James