Time machine - external disc keeps ejecting itself

[Janeilfen]

Anyone seen this?
Was working fine but not now.

I should add that the disc re-appears. As its encrypted (only way I could it to work at all), sometimes requests the password and sometimes it doesn't. Then it disappears again.... and re-appears again... and on and on....

 

[SanJoseEd]

Now that you mention it . . . yes, after years of fairly reliable use, ejecting after first backup of the day. Was using a LaCie (seagate) 6TB external USB 3 which had 18 mos. of backups but became so unreliable that I switched to a small off-brand 2TB USB 3.0 drive. It now ejects and re-mounts itself as a 2.0 device and carries on OK the rest of the day. The only thing that's changed, I hate to say it, is Catalina. Seems to have been happening since that was installed late 2019.

I guess the fix is to wait for the next iteration of Catalina.

 

[Honza1]

Yes, I know this issue... Happened few times already. Every time this happened to me it ended up to be disk hardware failing. Just about month ago my prior TM started doing this and eventually disk started to make clearly wrong noises and overheated. I had to replace it. Disks are cheap today. Just get new disk, it is worth it.
The trouble is, that Disk Utility may not find this since this may be happening only after long sustained use by TM. TM can stress disks quite lot.
It is NOT related to Catalina, but Catalina upgrade can provoke it - when you upgrade, lots of files change and TM disk is stressed more than long time before to back it up. This can hasten upcoming disk failure. But the disk would fail anyway, even without Catalina...

 

[AjTee]

Drive could be incompatible or port corrupted.

 

[Janeilfen]

Drive could be incompatible or port corrupted.

Could be but it did work..... and now it doesn’t.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Could be but it did work..... and now it doesn’t.

• What year and model Mac are you using?
• Happen with other external drives?
• What happens if you try the hard drive connected to a different port on the computer?
• Try the hard drive on a different Mac computer and see if the issue still happens.
• Maybe try doing a SMC reset.

Reset the SMC of your Mac - Apple Support

The SMC is responsible for managing power on your Mac. Resetting it can resolve certain uncommon issues related to power or thermal management.

support.apple.com

 

[Honza1]

Could be but it did work..... and now it doesn’t.

Hate to state the obvious, but this is true about every failed device ;-)
Things fail. All of them. Some earlier, some later. Some with warning, some without.

 

[firedept]

Same issue here with a Seagate drive. Would randomly eject itself here and there. Would mount again until it wouldn't. It was done working after only a couple of years. In the end I bought a new drive and installed it in the enclosure and have never had a problem since. Almost all drives eventually die.

 

[Janeilfen]

Sorted.
I have a new? (2018) mini which has 2 usb-a ports and 4 usb-c ports. I have a usb-a to usb-c adapter cable from amazon basics attached to 1 of the usb-c ports and was using this for the Time Machine drive. I moved that drive to one of the usb-a ports and that has fixed it. Must be something to do with the Amazon basics adapter cable, I guess.

Not sorted though and the subject of another thread, is that when I have anything plugged into any of the ports on the mini, my Apple Watch won't log me in. I am also now noticing erratic behaviour with my version 1 trackpad, which I have never seen before.