Disk not ejected properly

[Gregg2]

It's a Western Digital 2TB drive, Blue. I don't know it there is a model number. Nothing on it or in the pamphlet says "model number". It might be this: KB #3865

 

[rpmurray]

It's a Western Digital 2TB drive, Blue. I don't know it there is a model number. Nothing on it or in the pamphlet says "model number". It might be this: KB #3865

If it's a Western Digital drive then the model number should start with WD, e. g. WD5000AZLX, sometimes also called part number.

 

[Gregg2]

OK. The blue-on-blue made P/N look like PIN to me. So it's
WDBB7B0020BBL-XA50218
Otherwise known as 2TB Blue. 😉

 

[satcomer]

OK. The blue-on-blue made P/N look like PIN to me. So it's
WDBB7B0020BBL-XA50218
Otherwise known as 2TB Blue. 😉

It sound like a sleep function on the drive!

 

[driver49]

Well. How discouraging.

To find this thread is three years old and that the problem that we're discussing here has first surfaced years before that...?!?!

I recently replaced a Mac mini M1 with a Mac mini M4 and thought that that might solve the problem that creeped up too often on the Mac mini M1.

Alas.

The external drive is a SanDisk/GDrive 12-TB HDD that I have formatted into four partitions. And at least once an hour, if not more, I get the error message that all four drives have been ejected improperly.

I have replaced the cable a couple of times and that hasn't made any difference.

So it is comforting on the one hand to read that others have the same problem.

It is also aggravating to see that the problem has been around for a long time and Apple hasn't done a thing about it.

I see that this thread is more than three years old so I don't know if putting an entry here will bring it to the top for others to see, but if anybody's got any fresh ideas, other than those that are already presented in this thread I'm all ears.

Thanks,

--Paul S

 

[Ben J.]

The external drive is a SanDisk/GDrive 12-TB HDD that I have formatted into four partitions.

So, that's four HFS+ partitions - no APFS?

This has been a problem showing up in forums like this for as long as I can remember, and there's never been a final solution that I've ever seen; just people fixing it with replacing drives, cables, dasychaining etc.

I think you're in for a lot of troubleshooting, if you're to find what's the issue in your specific situation - like, start with one HFS+ partition only on the HDD, no hubs, nothing else connected, maybe run the mac in safe mode for a while.

If it happens on both the M1 and M4 with the same drive, this points to the drive being the issue. Try a different HDD if you can.

 

[driver49]

Not that I fully understand the difference between HFS+ and APFS – though I know that Apple is now using the latter for all of its operating systems – were I to make sure the drive in question is formatted APFS would that help for starters? It is possible that it is not, as my use of this drive I believe predates Apple's shift to APFS. I will have to check. That would give me the option of putting all the data from the four partitions into one, though I would prefer not to have do that as they all have rather historical purposes for me. Do you think I would be able to use for partitions if everything is APFS? It also occurred to me that in addition to the Time Machine backups that aren't working. I also have Backblaze for off site back up (which is why I'm not panicking over this), I guess I would have to do those back ups over too. The priority here is to get the drives and the data to just stay connected to the damn computer. Thanks, --PS

 

[Ben J.]

Apple created APFS to accommodate the way SSDs work, better than MacOS Extended (HFS+), basically - but HFS+ is still supported. But from Tahoe and onwards, macOS must be run on a APFS formatted drive.

Both APFS and HFS+ can be used on both SSDs and HDDs, but my experience is, and most reports are, that SSDs work better with APFS, and HDDs are less stressed with HFS+.

APFS came with some very nice new features compared to HFS+;
Volumes:
Kinda like partitions, but can be created in seconds, and don't have to have a fixed size as partitions do - thus, they 'share the free space'.
Snapshots:
You can create a snapshot on a APFS volume at any time, and it's like a copy of the files directory of a volume - not the files themselves, so they're small in size. Any file/folder present in any snapshot will never be overwritten - even if you drag it to the trash and empty it and they seem to be gone from Finder. That way, any file, in any snapshot will stay (invisible) on the drive, and be restorable. Once you delete your snapshots, the space used by those 'invisible' files will become available again.

I don't, in any way, have a deep understanding of these these things, but what I've written above, I'm pretty sure of, and is some of what I've learned over the last decade of going from Intel macs and HFS+ to M-series ARM and APFS.

(Btw, Any drive can still be partitioned, and partitions can be a mix of HFS+ and APFS.)