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External SSD - "Macintosh HD was ejected"

M

Micka88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 25, 2019
351
134
Seems Apple is making things better and better ...

I have Samsung T5 8TB external SSD and it is almost impossible to work with it ... and when I want to eject it, it always says "cannot be ejected - one or more programs may be using it" (nonsense - nothing is on). Force eject - does not work. I have to remove it manually and this is what I see (crazy).
 

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That's normal when you physically disconnect a drive that's in use. You say that nothing is using it, but your opinion doesn't matter. What matters is what the machine thinks.

A sure fire trick that always works for me is to log out and back in to my account. That will quit whatever process was using the drive.
 
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Download TaskExplorer

Objective-See: TaskExplorer

objective-see.org objective-see.org

Give it necessary permissions when prompted. Select a process above and select the middle tab "files" to view the files the process has open. Bottom left is a global search "spy glass". Select the "spy glass". Type the name of your external drive as mounted in macOS to see files and processes which have them open.
 
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What happened to me when I was in your situation was that my USB cable was starting to fail. When I replaced it, it worked properly, and I had no more problems.
 
chabig said:
That's normal when you physically disconnect a drive that's in use. You say that nothing is using it, but your opinion doesn't matter. What matters is what the machine thinks.

A sure fire trick that always works for me is to log out and back in to my account. That will quit whatever process was using the drive.
Click to expand...
What machine thinks is irrelevant if it does not tell you. Writing "one or more programs may be using it" sounds like some message from some distant rural fields. How is it possible that the super advanced Apple is not able to say what exactly is going on?

This disc is impossible to eject...
 
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I really wonder how is this possible - this SSD disc works normally and fast for a time being and then suddenly, without any real reason starts working super slow (like 30 times slower and impossible to eject). And then, suddenly after another few days it just starts working normally - full speed etc. And then again - super slow ...

What can be the reason behind that? Is it problem of Apple or of Samsung ?

I try disc utility first aid - all successful but no help.

APFS.
 
Download and install DriveDx. Curious to see the SMART status and "Health Indicators" for the drive. Post screenshot.

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.
binaryfruit.com binaryfruit.com
 
Micka88 said:
I really wonder how is this possible - this SSD disc works normally and fast for a time being and then suddenly, without any real reason starts working super slow (like 30 times slower and impossible to eject). And then, suddenly after another few days it just starts working normally - full speed etc. And then again - super slow ...

What can be the reason behind that? Is it problem of Apple or of Samsung ?

I try disc utility first aid - all successful but no help.

APFS.
Click to expand...

Like someone else mentioned, have you tried a different cable or USB port?
 
Bigwaff said:
Download and install DriveDx. Curious to see the SMART status and "Health Indicators" for the drive. Post screenshot.

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.
binaryfruit.com binaryfruit.com
Click to expand...
Does not look very good?

 
I've seen that message and couldn't figure out what it meant.

What are you doing, if anything, when the SSD gets the slowdown issue? Does it get hot?

Did you format the drive yourself?

Connected directly to the Mac, I assume. Which Mac is it?
 
BrianBaughn said:
I've seen that message and couldn't figure out what it meant.

What are you doing, if anything, when the SSD gets the slowdown issue? Does it get hot?

Did you format the drive yourself?

Connected directly to the Mac, I assume. Which Mac is it?
Click to expand...
I just connect the SSD and want to transfer data. Does not seem to get hotter than usually. Just gets extremely slow (even when opening its own folders).

Yes, I formatted the new disc myself to APFS in the beginning when I got it new (about 3 weeks ago)

Connected directly to MacBook Pro 3 16 Max with osx Sequoia.

I use another SSD discs (Samsung T7 4 and2TB and Sandisc 2 and 4 TB ) and they work normally.

EDIT: I was transferring data from this disc to another one and found it was suddenly transferred quickly (while before, without any change and disconnecting it worked 30 times slower). I now tried to measure the transfer speed and it is suddenly full (400 MB/s). Ejecting immediately ...

That does not make sense ??? I am sure that later today it will become extremely slow (11 MB/s ) again.

EDIT2: After seeing it works normally (400 MB/s all the time) and transferring all the data during few minutes I ejected the disc (it was ejected immediately). Then I connected it again. Wanted to open some folders and I already saw the folders were opening very slowly. Started another transfer. It started 300 MB/s but in few seconds it slowed down to 10 MB/s and continues like that forever ... :(( I connected it to the same port, same cable, nothing else happening in the computer.
Can't eject the disc any more now.
 
Last edited:
Some ideas...

I wonder if this has anything to do with the USB port's ability to supply power or if somehow the connection reverts to USB2. It really does sound like some kind of hardware issue.

When the device is not ejectable and slow, some process must be writing to it and the write is failing and 100,000 retries is also failing, again hardware, I think.
 
ChrisA said:
Some ideas...

I wonder if this has anything to do with the USB port's ability to supply power or if somehow the connection reverts to USB2. It really does sound like some kind of hardware issue.

When the device is not ejectable and slow, some process must be writing to it and the write is failing and 100,000 retries is also failing, again hardware, I think.
Click to expand...
Do you mean Macbook hardware ?

I just connected it to another MacBook 3 Pro Max. Transfer extremely slow too, eject impossible and Finder completely stuck and finished ... So it is obviously not a problem of a particular Macbook.
 
The not being ejectable clue could be pointing to something else busy reading/writing to the drive, hence the slow speeds as a result as well! Have you tried finding which processes are reading/writing to it as mentioned above?
 
Flyview said:
The not being ejectable clue could be pointing to something else busy reading/writing to the drive, hence the slow speeds as a result as well! Have you tried finding which processes are reading/writing to it as mentioned above?
Click to expand...
There is nothing going on ... computer freshly restarted. As I said - I even connected to another MBP - the same issue.

No such issue with any other discs.
 
Seems the disk is K.O. I wanted to format it by disk utility - first some Error. I restarted the computer, connected the disc, started formatting and creating the partition map takes already almost half an hour without end ...

Another Samsung disk 4TB on another Macbook Pro started being extremely slow too but after First Aid it works good again.

I wonder if this is some Sequoia strange issue ?

And also - are there any external SSD discs that are really reliable ?

The only ones are old Sandisks - we have quite few 4TB and 2 TB and they work absolutely perfect for maybe 4 years. Last year I bought another Sandisk 4TB and it failed very soon, I replaced it within warranty, failed again, third one too (seems bad new firmware for Mac). Then we started with Samsungs and it is like that now :((
 
BrianBaughn said:
Maybe you should download and run the Samsung Magician software…check the drive.
Click to expand...
I tried even before! Seems also a kind of hopeless stuff. I installed, started it and whatever I did (with other discs connected) it recognised only Macintosh HD ... nothing else ever (the external discs)
 
Micka88 said:
I tried even before! Seems also a kind of hopeless stuff. I installed, started it and whatever I did (with other discs connected) it recognised only Macintosh HD ... nothing else ever (the external discs)
Click to expand...
Was the drive acting up at the time?

As to other externals…you could spend a lot more but get a bare 8GB M.2 SSD and a 40Gb/s enclosure and have a MUCH faster drive.
 
Going on like this for already one hour ... And chose APFS / GUID format ...
Screenshot 2024-10-18 at 10.15.37.png
 
Becoming a kind of scifi story. We arrived at another place tonight - I tried formatting it again and it was done in 30 seconds and the file transfer speed is maximum now. I really wonder what is going on? This thing has some changing, depressions, joys etc. ? :)
 
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