time machine keeps "ejecting"

i hope this is where this goes, if not please put it in the right spot....

as of the last week, my time machine disk keeps getting ejected on it own. i'll come back to my computer and it will have an error that says "the disk has been removed before it was ready" or whatever it says, as if i had just unplugged it before it was ready.


of course, i am not ejecting it or unplugging it.... so what gives?

I've checked all of the wires and connections and everything seems to be fine. I've got plenty of space on the drive (400+ gigs left).

its never done anything while I'm using my computer, only when its asleep...

and upon further inspection, it appears that when i enter time machine it is still backing up, even though it says the disk has been ejected... I've still got my hourly backups in there.... interesting....
help!

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plot thickens...

so if i enter time machine, I've got backups every hour for the last day, but when i plugged everything back in and clicked "back up now", it says my latest back up was yesterday afternoon...

hmmm... now I'm even more confused (does the computer have an internal time machine back up? how could i have back ups if time machine wasn't "plugged in" according to my computer?)

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and finally.... i just tried to back everything up, when it got to the very end of the time machine back up, the error popped up as if the disk had been ejected and it interrupted the back up...