external drive ejects improperly daily

tadezya wrote:

This has been an ongoing issue for years, there are many posts in the Apple Support forum about this - the threads are all being closed and Apple has never once responded or provided any details or solutions. I have a brand new Mac Mini M4 and am experiencing this as well. As of now, Apple clearly does not care, and is not working to solve the issue. Sorry for the bad news.

I've only personally seen this issue one time and it was with a laptop I was troubleshooting & repairing. I believe the issue was due to the USB-C port on the laptop. While it appeared in good condition, it wasn't as tight a fit as it would have been when new. It was good enough, but apparently just loose enough to cause a disconnect when the laptop & drive were moved ever so slightly.

Plus the quality of cables is very poor. Drive manufacturers don't use the best cables. Try replacing the USB cable with a high quality cable from a reputable brand (assuming drive is connected directly to the computer). I have also seen some users report better drive usage when connecting the drive to an external USB hub/dock.

Do these drive ejections perhaps occur after the computer has gone to sleep & woken up?

tadezya wrote:

This has been an ongoing issue for years, there are many posts in the Apple Support forum about this - the threads are all being closed and Apple has never once responded or provided any details or solutions. I have a brand new Mac Mini M4 and am experiencing this as well. As of now, Apple clearly does not care, and is not working to solve the issue. Sorry for the bad news.

I agree with HWTech. After many years of me and scores of colleagues where I am employed using docks for external drives, our experience has been that problems with drives ejecting or refusing to mount are often traced to:

• • cables (they do wear out, and many are low quality)
  • the dock itself; even if from a high quality vendor like OWC, they do eventually wear out as well -- sometimes the symptom is one port doesn't work reliably, or multiple ports, or just the ethernet port, or something with the power supply for docks with pass through power charging
  • use of cheap drives of questionable quality, or one has a good drive that is going bad (they all will fail eventually)
  • user has installed drive manufacturer software/firmware that is not current or is not fully compatible with the MacOS; or the user has something else installed that conflicts with the MacOS

It seems low likelihood that the MacOS is causing this because there are probably billions of users with external drives being used for Time Machine, etc. That said, I always wait a little while before updating because once in a while there might be a MacOS issue, although if it is with the MacOS Apple has been quick to fix those.

And yes, there are some reports over the years from users having problems with external drives but I believe they are generally due to one of the causes I list above.

If you are using sleep then do not. Sleep causes many eject issues. Just have display turn after a set time.

Tmontognese wrote:

every day i have to restart the computer to see and use my external photo drive. And i get a daily drive ejected improperly notice as well. Can someone tell me a possible solution to this?

it is one of the symptoms when a drive is working in a state of failure...

external connected how(?) I would bypass any hub if that is the issue.

tadezya wrote:

This has been an ongoing issue for years, there are many posts in the Apple Support forum about this - the threads are all being closed and Apple has never once responded or provided any details or solutions. I have a brand new Mac Mini M4 and am experiencing this as well. As of now, Apple clearly does not care, and is not working to solve the issue. Sorry for the bad news.

This is a user forum, Apple does not respond or provide solutions here. If that is what you want, contact Apple.

Official Apple Support

This has been an ongoing issue for years, there are many posts in the Apple Support forum about this - the threads are all being closed and Apple has never once responded or provided any details or solutions. I have a brand new Mac Mini M4 and am experiencing this as well. As of now, Apple clearly does not care, and is not working to solve the issue. Sorry for the bad news.

Before assuming the drive is dying, check the basics, make sure it’s connected directly to the Mac Studio and not through a hub or adapter, because flaky hubs are the number one cause of “disk ejected improperly” alerts.

Swap the cable too, USB-C and USB-A cables fail way more often than the drives themselves. If the disconnects continue, open Disk Utility and run First Aid; if it reports repeated I/O errors or won’t complete a check, the drive is likely failing and macOS is disconnecting it to protect your data. In that case, back it up immediately and replace it.