Disk Not Ejected Properly

I have two 28T Seagate disks set up as a RAID (via macOS) for my Time Machine backups. But every time my computer goes to sleep and then wakes up, I get a Disk Not Ejected Properly message, and both disks are no longer connected to my Mac. Here's the information about my disk according to System Info:



I have the disks connected to my iMac M3 (running Tahoe) via USB using an OWC 5 Port Thunderbolt Hub that is powered, so, power shouldn't be a problem. There's a third disk connected via this hub (Western Digital) that does not disconnect when the computer wakes, so, I don't think the problem is the hub or power.


Is the problem the RAID? I can't just turn that off to test because it's currently my backup drive and that would require erasing it. In my Energy settings, I turned off "put hard disks to sleep when possible" but no difference. Anything else I can do to fix this?


iMac 24″, macOS 26.0

Posted on Nov 5, 2025 11:50 AM

Reply
6 replies

Nov 5, 2025 12:11 PM in response to Tom H.

Not a direct answer to the question, but your disks are configured as a striped raid (known as RAID 0).


This is not the best setup for a backup drive. It's often joked that the '0' in RAID 0 stands for 'no redundancy', because that's what you have.


Data written to this volume is striped across the drives - half to one drive, half to the other. The advantage is speed (each drive only has to do half the work, so things are (approx.) twice as fast).

The downside is that no drive has a complete picture of the data. This means losing either drive will result in the loss of all data. Hardly the ideal setup for a backup solution.


RAID 0 is best suited for performance, where the workload is spread across drives to improve throughput, or for capacity where you need the most space possible and don't care so much about data loss.


For backup purposes you should consider RAID 1, which mirrors both drives, so data written to one is also written to the other, giving you a better chance of recovering your data when (not if) one drive fails. Of course, your capacity is limited to the smallest drive in the RAID group (in this case, 28TB).


With Time Machine, though, you'd actually be better off running them as two separate drives, not as a RAID set. When Time Machine has multiple drives configured as the backup destination, it alternates the backups (backup 1 goes to drive 1, backup 2 to drive 2, backup 3 to drive 1, etc.). This is potentially superior to RAID because each drive has multiple distinct snapshots and if one drive fails, TM continues to run on the other drive, only losing the specific snapshots on the failed drive


For the specific issue - has this always been the case? or did it start recently?

My first thought would be power, but they're powered separately from the host system, so that's not likely to be a problem.

The second would be that one of the drives is taking longer to spin up on restart/wake, so the RAID set isn't 'ready' when the OS is trying to mount the volume. This could be an early warning sign that the drive is having issues, and your data is at risk.(see my note about RAID 0, above)

Nov 5, 2025 12:44 PM in response to Tom H.

I occasionally experience the 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' message with my NAS that I use as my primary TM backup. I just dismiss the error, the drive reconnects automatically when the next hourly backup starts.


You could consider a 3rd party app that automatically ejects your mounted disks at sleep, such as Jettison.


I would echo the comment from Camelot that RAID0 is not optimal for a backup disk. A commonly recommended strategy is 3-2-1 where you have three copies of your data, two of which are backups and one of which is stored offsite. With your drive as RAID0, you have 2-0 (one in-use copy and one backup copy). My NAS is configured as RAID1, and my secondary TM backups are a pair of 4 TB SSDs that I connect weekly and swap offsite (so technically I'm 5-4-1 but overkill is better than the converse, IMO).

Nov 5, 2025 1:08 PM in response to Camelot

Hi, thanks for the info about the RAID. I'm using this configuration because I need 56T the two disks provide for backup, because one of my disks is 20T alone, so, I'd immediately run out of space if I used a single 28T disk for backup. I'm also backing up with an offsite service as well, so, I have two copies of my data.


The two Seagate disks are brand new, I got them a month ago, so, I'm hoping there's no issue with either one already. I ran a Disk Utility check on them and it came out fine.

Nov 5, 2025 1:23 PM in response to neuroanatomist

For now I've turned off sleep mode on my computer to see if that helps.


The reason I have the two disks set up as RAID 0 is because I have a ton of large video files and need a lot of space. One of the disks being backed up is a 20T disk that is 3/4 full, so, using a single 28T disk would mean I'll run out of room on that backup disk pretty fast. I wish I could set up a more robust multi-drive RAID system like you have, but, the cost is really high for the storage I'd need, so, this is the most affordable solution I could come up with for now. I also have an offsite backup of everything. It's not 3-2-1, but, some of the DAS RAID solutions I was looking at were in the range of $5-8,000, which is difficult to afford right now.

Disk Not Ejected Properly

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.