Is there a way to get rid of these errors? (Disk not ejected properly)

[solinari6]

Every morning when I come to my Mac, I have to close out a bunch of these messages. It's super annoying. It's complaining about my external hard drive, this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08RSH8YDJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's a 1TD SSD that is partitioned into 2 drives, a Time Machine drive, and a regular hard drive.

My Mac is a bit old, it's a 13-inch, 2020, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports MacBook Pro. I had hoped that upgrading to the latest OSX would solve the problem, but it has not. I've tried plugging the drive in to different thunderbolt ports, but they all do the same thing.

Is it just a problem with the drive itself? Or is osX just being screwy? It's weird, some days it is just a few of these, other days it's a TON.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Is there a way to get rid of these errors? (Disk not ejected properly)"

Eject the disk(s) properly before putting the Mac to sleep for the night.

Really...
That's "the answer".

 

[solinari6]

"Is there a way to get rid of these errors? (Disk not ejected properly)"

Eject the disk(s) properly before putting the Mac to sleep for the night.

Really...
That's "the answer".

Dang, is that really what Apple expects people to do? Eject all their disks before the computer sleeps? LOL

Maybe I could try just preventing my mac from ever sleeping, see if that does the trick?

 

[chown33]

Have you tried a different cable? You didn't mention the cable at all in your post.

 

[za9ra22]

While that could be caused by the Mac entering sleep, the fact there are possibly a number of identical errors suggests not - unless entering sleep generates the error which then wakes the system, which then returns (eventually) to sleep... and round and round. It could be that the SSD is dropping into its own sleep mode.

What I would try is to set the Mac to NOT sleep, but the screen to switch off, and leave it that way for a few days. If the errors continue, it's likely the SSD (possibly a cable problem, but if you don't see this error while the system is in active use, likely not). If the errors stop, then it is likely the Mac's sleep that is the root cause of this.

I didn't experience these errors with my iMac and external drives when that was left to drop into sleep each night.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Have you considered just shutting down the Mac at night, and rebooting in the morning?

 

[zevrix]

Dang, is that really what Apple expects people to do? Eject all their disks before the computer sleeps? LOL

No of course not. Normally, you shouldn't do anything out of ordinary. You can keep your disks connected at all times regardless of what your machine is doing.

I remember that this problem was common on one of the macOS versions years ago. I experienced this as well as many other users. But this, once again, was fixed long time ago.

Frankly, I don't know why you're having this issue. One thing for sure is that it's abnormal and something doesn't function properly on either software or/and hardware side.

 

[gilby101]

It's weird, some days it is just a few of these, other days it's a TON.

To me, that hints at a hardware problem. Hopefully, only cable not fitting well, dirt in the socket on SSD, or bad cable.

 

[solinari6]

Have you tried a different cable? You didn't mention the cable at all in your post.

I actually DID put a different cable on it yesterday, and when I woke up this morning, there's no errors! (yet)!

Crossing my fingers that was the issue! LOL
Thanks!!

 

[solinari6]

day 2, and still no errors! I think that confirms it, it was a faulty cable! Thanks guys!

 

[TheMastermarketeer]

"Is there a way to get rid of these errors? (Disk not ejected properly)"

Eject the disk(s) properly before putting the Mac to sleep for the night.

Really...
That's "the answer".

That should not be necessary. It has gone berserk since update Version 14.4.1 (23E224) I'll just be working (MacBook) pro and it will come up on it's own and the drive is still on the desk top real pain in the ass.

 

[Boyd01]

Hopefully it was just the cable in your case. However, there are discussions of external drives mysteriously ejecting going back for years here. I did not see this much in the past, but for the last couple years I've been using a 2018 Mini with an external SSD on each of the 4 USB-C ports. For the most part, this is trouble-free. Then, for no apparent reason, I'll come back to the computer and find that one or two drives have been ejected.

Really doesn't happen very often, but (funny) it just happened overnight and two ssd's were ejected this morning. It had been a month or more since the last time it happened. Same issue with both Catalina and Monterey on this machine.

I wonder if it's a USB power issue, where one of the disks is drawing too much and another can't get enough? It was interesting this morning, my usual fix is just to unplug the disk and plug it back in, but two had ejected overnight. However, when I did that on the first disk, the second one automatically re-mounted all by itself. This might support the idea of not having enough power? Has been processing data for the past 12 hours with no problems, including some intensive disk access running large backups with Carbon Copy.

My Mini never sleeps and mostly runs 24/7 processing terabytes of geodata using both MacOS and Windows 10 under Parallels. So, it's set so that only the display sleeps.

 

[NoBoMac]

Hopefully it was just the cable in your case. However, there are discussions of external drives mysteriously ejecting going back for years here.

[...]

I wonder if it's a USB power issue, where one of the disks is drawing too much and another can't get enough?

Could very well be power. And bad cable adding to drawing more power than within spec?

I remember old threads about C2D MacBook Pros and the need to be specific wrt which ports you plugged drives into and in which order USB devices would need to be plugged in so as not to cause the external drive(s) to crash. Probably a large amount of bunk with that info, but probably some truth as I did need to use a powered hub from time to time to get more than one HDD to work at same time with those.

And with my current MBP, I'm using an Anker brick that has a C and A port in it. The A port will draw 15W when in use, and if trying to use it along with using the C to drive the Mac and an HDD, can get wonky. But if I run the power through a hub (draws 15W) then to Mac, drives stay online, but will be undercharging the Mac (but ok for the short amount of time I'm needing more than one HDD online).