Backup drive ejects randomly

MY backup hard drive is ejected at random intervals, sometimes daily, sometimes weekly. It is a Iomega drive using SuperDuper

Mike, I tried a new cable although I had to go to an online store to get a Firewire 800/400 cable. However my backup drive still gets ejected randomly. Thanks for trying to help.

Similar Messages

External Thunderbolt Drives Eject Randomly and Name Changes to Blank

I Have two external thunderbolt drives connected to the trash can mac pro ... sometimes they eject randomly with one drive renaming itself to blank ...
Anyone ?

Aloha,
It was a long week. Here is an update.
Had the opportunity to go to the Apple Store yesterday and purchase new thunderbolt cables, and hooked everything up this morning.
I disconnected the Seagate drive from the sled, and brushed the contacts.
The Seagate hard drive did not boot on my iMac and Disk Utility could not see it. That said, when booted to my wife's iMac, Disk Utility could see the drive, but I could not verify or repair it. The data from my wife's iMac is attached.
Also, I tried to run Data Rescue 4. It would not see the drive. I do have Disk Warrior, if that is a reasonable option to try.
Additionally, the LaCie (now connected to my iMac with a new thunderbolt cable) has not yet been ejected. The computer has gone to sleep several times and I have awakened it.
I very much appreciate your thoughts and time, And I look forward to your thoughts, To include any experience in getting the data off of the Seagate. It contains seven years worth of photographs, which I would hate to lose. I also got the message about redundant backups. There may be some of the backup in Crash Plan.
Mahalo nui loa
WRL

ThinkPad L530 DVD-RW Drive Ejecting Randomly & Crashing

The dvd drive will eject randomly and when that happens it crashes my laptop. The screen will go black and you have to hold down the power button to restart the comp.
This happens whether or not the dvd drive is is enabled or not. I ran a virus scan and found nothing.
Am running Windows 8 in desktop mode.

Hi again, cruxial
I did some brief research on the Event ID 41 error and found a few things. One Microsoft article (found here) advises to make sure that the memory is not having issues. This can be checked by pressing Enter at the LENOVO screen when starting the computer, and then running the diagnostic called the Quick memory test. A user on a Microsoft forum (found here) found that once all drivers for his system were updated, the error stopped for him. I would give these steps a shot and see if anything changes. The drivers for your system can be found here.
Best,
Adam
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Backup drive ejects after TM backup

Hi
I am not sure if this has already been covered, as there are various similar posts, so please accept my appologies if it has.
I have an external 1TB WD My Passport drive which I use for TM backup's. When I plug in via USB, DriveUnlock appears. I unlock the drive, then instigate a TM backup. All goes fine, then from what I can gather, when the TM backup has finished, the drive ejects itself. There is no error messages, unmount drive issues, it just dissappears from finder. I can only assume the backup has been successful, as no error messages appear, meaning the drive wasn't ejected while backup was in progress. I have changed the USB cable, as well as tried different ports, but the same always happens. In System Preferencies/Energy Saver, I have made sure the Put HD to sleep is un ticked. Still it happens. Has anyone else had this problem, and is it fixable? I would love to keep the drive attached and backing up for the period I am working, usually 12 hours a day, rather than the once a day at the moment.
thanks

mpphoto72 wrote:
When I plug in via USB, DriveUnlock appears.
If you're using the drive with Time Machine, you don't need WD's SmartWare backup software. It may be conflicting with TM. Uninstall it.
See https://discussions.apple.com/message/15462618#15462618

Drive ejects randomly

My CD/DVD drive ejects often and without warning. It remains open until I close it again, but it will soon eject again. It ejects with no disc in it, while playing a CD/DVD, while in the middle of burning, you name it. I bought a new drive (Lightscribe) and it does the same thing. I put the original Superdrive in and it still ejects also. Let me know if anyone's heard of this one. Thanks in advance.
Brian

My MacBook has "ejected" by itself, uncommanded, several times since I bought it. No disc in the drive at the time. There doesn't seem to be a pattern as to when it happens. It has happened when I was typing (hand nowhere near the Eject button) -- besides, there's no disc in the drive, so Eject button doesn't do that anyway.
Other times, it happens when I'm not even touching the MacBook.
Erase / install and it's still doing it. Reset SMC and it's still doing it.

Empty optical drive ejects randomly (every 2-15 mins)

I'm having a problem with my recently purchased Studio 1535 laptop....
Specs:
Vista Home Premium (SP 1) (32-bit)
Intel Core2Duo T5750 (2GHz)
4Gb RAM
The problem is that every now and then I hear the optical drive make an eject sound, even though there is no disc in it. It doesn't seem to happen when a disc is inside ...I can play CD albums without them ejecting mid play.
I don't think the behaviour is a serious problem (the noise that the drive makes sounds more or less like a normal eject mechanism). However, it's quite annoying and disconcerting, and I don't think it's 'normal' because we have another Studio 1535 (exactly the same specs) that doesn't behave like this.
If anyone can help me rectify this behaviour I'd be extremely thankful!
Thanks,
Marc
Message Edited by RelicDelic on 09-06-2008 11:43 AM

first try upgrading the firmware on the drive. this is different than the drivers or the bios version. if that does not work, try this and let me know... i have heard of this on some older laptops... it is worth a shot in the dark. try both separately so we know what worked....
--Restore Setup Defaults
Follow the appropriate steps below for your system:
1. Restart your computer.
2. At the first text on the screen or immediately after the Dell logo appears,
press the <F2> key every three seconds until the message Entering Setup appears.
3. When the System Setup screen appears, press <Alt> + <F> keys at the same
time to resotre the defaults. (DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK, IF YOU HAVE A CUSTOMIZED BIOS, MAY HAVE TO GO THROUGH IT AGIAN - not a big deal)
4. Press the <Esc> key.
5. Press the <Enter> key to save changes and exit.
Your computer restarts.
--check if the drive ejects in bios.
To enter into Bios please perform the following.
Restart the system.
Keep tapping the F2 as soon as you see the initial dell logo key to Enters
System Setup menu (i.e. the bios screen)
2.Press the eject button on the front of the CD drive.
3. Restart and try it out.

USB Drives Ejecting Themselves randomly

I am having a very odd, and potentially "dangerous" (as it may lead to corrupt backups) problem with the USB ports on my brand new late 2011 Macbook Pro 13". The problem is that any usb drive (incl. Powered External HDDs, USB sticks, memory card readers etc.) eject themselves randomly while connected to any of the two available USB ports. I have read through several discussions about this issue but have not been able to find any explanation or solution to this. The thing which bothers me most is that when I wiggle the usb plug in the port on the laptop, the drives eject SOMETIMES, and sometimes they just eject without me doing anything, and sometimes they don't eject at all; so I don't know if it is a hardware fault, or something which I can fix myself!
I brought the machine back to the store and plugged two USB sticks in and wiggled them about, and they stayed mounted, so that was a waste of time. Then I thaught, maybe it has something to do with power management, so I tried this with the MagSafe connected and disconnected. It seems that the ejecting happens when the MagSafe IS connected to the power, and more often with my POWERED External HDDs. It makes no difference which ports I use. I reset the System Management Controller (SMC) and the problem SEEMS to have stopped, but I only tested shortly after doing this.
My question is, should I be worried that I have faulty USB ports on my Macbook (since wiggling the connection seems to have affected it), or is it really something to do with the SMC and my hardware is all OK?
Thanks in advance for your help!

So, my MacBook Pro has now undergone a logic board swap, and when I got it back from repair everything seemend perfectly fine. The external drives which kept getting ejected are not ejecting any more, no matter how much I wiggle the plug in the USB socket. Then yesterday I tried a small USB stick, and bam - it's getting ejected again when touched slightly. I tried 2 different sticks and the same thing is happening. Then I tried the HDDs again - no problems. Then tried the USB sticks again - no problems. This is really driving me crazy, I cannot understand why it happens so intermittently and then works prefectly like nothing ever happened. Also, it can't be a software issue since physically moving the USB plug affects it. Now I am not sure if I should take it back for another repair and keep fighting, or just learn to live with it. I am wondering if it is simply a design fault with the MacBook Pro, or something to do with the way the USB ports are built. Any ideas on what I should do?

What's the best way to safely eject external backup drive

I just bought a new Seagate external drive and made my first backup. Their website said the best way to disconnect it is to drag the desktop icon to the trash. I apparently ruined my previous backup drive (Adata) by right-clicking and selecting "Eject" from the context menu. This same "Eject" option is available for the Seagate drive and I read on this forum that it's a safe way to disconnect the drive. However, after using my Adata drive for a couple of years and getting frequent warnings saying the it hadn't been ejected properly after the previous backup, last week it just wouldn't work anymore and backups simply failed. So I'm not feeling confident about how to safely disconnect my new hard drive... Thanks for any advice.

Things can happen to drives after a few years of year of use, even if the hardware itself is OK. The directory structure can get corrupted, etc. Choosing "eject" rather than dragging the icon to the trash isn't going to make a difference. I think Seagate tells users to do it because it's perhaps the simplest, most obvious method. Disk Utility can usually fix minor problems with your directory structure or volume info.
One problem with external drives is that some external enclosures are a lot better than others. So a drive can seem to be failing when in fact the enclosure itself has a problem. It's a good idea to have a spare dock or enclosure on hand to test for this possibility. A spare known-good cable is something else to keep in your "toolkit".

HP 550 dvd drive auto ejects randomly

Hi
i have a hp550 notebook running win xp with sp2
the problem is that dvd drive keeps ejecting randomly with or without a disk in the drive

I have same problem. My new notebook is HP Pavilion dv6t Quad Edition just one month. When I turn on power, dvd drvie auto eject. It can not be closed. If put a cd inside. it run and read nothing.
What I can do...
Thanks.

Time machine-- can't eject backup drive

Hi, everyone.
I have a backup drive attached to time machine. I need to use the firewire port my external drive is plugged into (there is only one) to upload from my video camera. But I it won't let me eject the drive, even though I have gone into Time Machine preferences and turned off the backup. Whenever I try to eject the drive I get en error message that it is in use. What can I do aside from yanking out the cable?
Thanks!

Launch Activity Monitor and see if anything is running that might be using the disk. Spotlight would be my first guess. Spotlight processes start with "md". If that is the case just wait for Spotlight to finish. Don't ever yank a cable without ejecting first. If you get desperate, try shutting down the computer and then disconnect the Time Machine drive.

My Seagate external 250GB hard drive ejects improperly without command. I am trying to use Time Machine to backup my macbook via usb cable... I keep getting the message that the disked ejected improperly... Any solutions...

My Seagate external 250GB hard drive ejects improperly without command. I am trying to use Time Machine to backup my macbook via usb cable... I keep getting the message that the disked ejected improperly... Any solutions...

You are not alone. Thousands have this problem, on various models of Macs. Short answer, it has something to do with the disk going to sleep (possibly?). You can't do anything about it and Apple won't address the problem. Maybe you should buy a time capsule. Just keep giving them money and use their proprietary equipment.
For a more complete answer, see this thread (all 65+ pages of it with NO SOLUTION IN SIGHT... except for some 3rd party solutions that sometimes work, sometimes don't): Disk Drive ejecting itself

USB3 ONLY external drive ejecting during backup

This has been discussed and posted in various ways here, but I haven't seen/found a solid solution yet which might be out there.
Has anyone figured out the solution to a USB3 drive ejecting on it's own?
My staff's OWC USB3 external portrable hard drive keeps ejecting during any operation: time machine, Carbon Copy, Lightroom, importing, moving files, etc.
Attached is a screen shot of the warning box that comes up when the drive ejects itself.
COMPUTER:
The machine is a 2012 NON-Retina MBP.
OSX 10.8.2
EXTERNAL DRIVE:
The drive is an OWC Mercury Elite On the Go drive: USB3 only
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MSU37750GB16/
We have used the drive, and cable on my 2011 MBP, OSX 10.7.5 with only USB2 on my machine, and it runs perfectly fine under all conditions.
ATTEMPTED FIXES:
Repaired disk permissions
Disk Warrior
Defrag
All Updates for OSX
Re-install OSX
All updates for 2012 MBP
Taken to Apple "Genius" bar twice. They confirm the failures. Initially blamed the drive/enclousure/cable. Then blamed that there were firmware and other updates that would fix it....which they did not.
YET TO ATTEMPT :
Creating a 10.7.5 boot partition on the 2012 MBP and test that.
Trying a powered external drive on the 2012 MPB
Trying a FW800 drive
Any thing else I am missing? Trying to avoid having to send it into Apple Care and be without a needed machine for week+, and concerned that like others, it won't be fixed anyway.
Appreciate your thoughts.

I have something similar on a brand new iMac 27" i7 top of the line model. I bought a USB 3 enclosure from OCW for a 120 gig SSD. I was using it as the cache drive for Photoshop CS6. It began to display the same issues you are describing. I brushed it off and blamed the cheap enclosure I purchased. This all occurred 1 week ago on 1-22-2013.
On Saturday 1-26-2013 I was backing up a sweet sixteen shoot via time machine connected to the USB3 port and the drive ejected mid way of a 70 gig back up. I found that strange because I've never had a problem with that drive or the enclosure it's in. (By the way this is a USB2 enclosure) I tried it 3 more times and the same issue occurred. I figured it was the cable and switched it with another USB cable and this time it worked.
Not thinking much about I assumed the problem was the cable. The next morning I realized I still had one 8 gig compact flash card in my camera and I needed to back that one up. This time I used my USB 3 RAW STEEL UDMA card reader to ingest the work. There were only 20 images on the card. During import the compact flash drive froze on the third image. I had to force quit and redo the import again. It took 3 times before I had no issues importing the images. I could not figure out what the **** was going on until it hit me.
During my trouble shooting I realized the 3 drives were, when they ejected themsleves, connected to the same port in the back of my iMac. The second one closest to the SD card reader port in the back. That was the free port I kept switching to use these different peripherals.
I need to do a little more testing but I'm almost certain something is wrong the the USB3 ports in the back of the new computers. Never had these issues with my late 2009 iMac.
The last thing I want to is haul this machine into Apple after it took me 4 days to get it set up the way I use it for my Photography business.
Disappointed big time!

External USB3 backup drive (WD) disconnects randomly and won't back up - mavericks

since the upgrade to mavericks i started having this bug:
my WD external USB3 drive (managed by time machine) wants to disconnect on its own.
I keep getting errors that I need to expel the drive before disconnecting. but I do nothing to disconnect the drive....
According to the disk utility, the external drive is still in good shape. but I could not set it up as backup drive anymore.
I have been using this drive for one year now, never had problems with lion. both drive and mac mini are about one year old.
is there a fix on the way for this?
Thank you!

Check the More Like This section at the right particularly i upgraded my imac hard drive to a 2tb drive. how do i use time machine to get my computer back to normal?

Time Machine Drive Ejecting Itself--Spotlight culprit?

Hi,
I have to backup my MBP ASAP so that I can take it to Apple for repairs. When I first got the computer, I thought both my external drives were ejecting randomly so I never thought that Time Machine was the issue. The other hard drive proved to have a faulty wire and solved that problem, but I still can't seem to determine why my Time Machine drive keeps randomly ejecting. I searched this and various other forums for an answer and narrowed down my problems to my antivirus and spotlight indexing. At first, the harddrive would last anywhere from 0mins-45mins before being ejected. I began checking the console logs and notices some instances where my antivirus was running at the same moment. I disabled scanning of the TM backup and saw the biggest improvement in how long the drive was able to stay connected and make backups before ejecting. It stayed on for close to 6-7 hours.
Then, it ejected randomly again and I checked the console messages and saw spotlight returned some indexing errors. This time the ejection made the drive unreadable and I had to reformat. I backed up again and it kept ejecting itself early on in the backup process with the same spotlight errors. I added the entire drive to Spotlight's privacy list, and it managed to complete the entire backup. The drive then stayed connected without ejecting for another 7-9 hours the next day without any random ejects before the spotlight errors struck again. The drive is still listed in the privacy and it is still excluded from antivirus scanning. I have repaired the disk several times and gotten the "Appears to be OK" message. I even reformatted the drive and did another complete backup hoping that would take care of any corrupt Spotlight indexing. I have also rebuilt the entire index for both Spotlight on the internal and external drive. At this point, I need to run the backup as I am getting my hard drive swapped. What I am most concerned about is, even if I get another backup successfully on the drive, will I run into any problem using Setup/Migration assistant (random ejects, freezes, corrupt data) when its time to transfer my info back to the new install of OS X and be left without my data altogether? I also just need to this work... as what is the point of a backup solution, if you can't rely on it to make it through a day without crashing..
Below is the latest log file from Console. Any help will be greatly appreciated as I have went through the same steps that proved successful for others who had the same issue before me.
Console Log:
Oct 25 19:35:58 CSKMBP1086 com.apple.backupd[12396]: Starting standard backup
Oct 25 19:35:58 CSKMBP1086 com.apple.backupd[12396]: Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine /Backups.backupdb
Oct 25 19:36:04 CSKMBP1086 com.apple.backupd[12396]: No pre-backup thinning needed: 202.8 MB requested (including padding), 35.59 GB available
Oct 25 19:37:15 CSKMBP1086 kernel[0]:
Oct 25 19:37:15 CSKMBP1086 com.apple.backupd[12396]: Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /Library/Logs to /Volumes/Time Machine /Backups.backupdb/CSKMBP1086/2010-10-25-193558.inProgress/69A3D5EC-1F5B-495A-AE B6-CFE539F99764/Macintosh HD/Library
Oct 25 19:37:15 CSKMBP1086 kernel[0]:
Oct 25 19:37:15: --- last message repeated 4 times ---
Oct 25 19:37:15 CSKMBP1086 mds[41]: (/Volumes/Time Machine/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/3ACBCEAD-A6E0-485B-9EC8-6ABCAB507777)(E rror) IndexStore in SIStoreDirytySDBChunks:Error storing dirty sdb pages: 22
Oct 25 19:37:15 CSKMBP1086 kernel[0]:
Oct 25 19:37:15: --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Oct 25 19:37:15 CSKMBP1086 mds[41]: (/Volumes/Time Machine /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/3ACBCEAD-A6E0-485B-9EC8-6ABCAB507777)(Error) IndexCI in _ContentIndexSyncIndexBulk:preSync error:22 22
Oct 25 19:37:16 CSKMBP1086 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[12396]): Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault
Oct 25 19:37:16 CSKMBP1086 Finder[7405]: * CFMessagePort: dropping corrupt reply Mach message (0b100101)
Oct 25 19:37:16 CSKMBP1086 com.apple.Finder[7405]: Failed to send message to backup server: error = -5
Oct 25 19:37:16 CSKMBP1086 SystemUIServer[7404]: * CFMessagePort: dropping corrupt reply Mach message (0b100101)
Oct 25 19:37:16 CSKMBP1086 com.apple.SystemUIServer.agent[7404]: Failed to send message to backup server: error = -5
Oct 25 19:37:16 CSKMBP1086 com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[12410]: 2010-10-25 19:37:16.532 ReportCrash[12410:1407] Saved crash report for backupd[12396] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/backupd2010-10-25-193716localhost.crash

BrinXx wrote:
narrowed down my problems to my antivirus
Unless you're running Windoze on your Mac, you may not need any anti-virus software at all. See Thomas Reed's [Mac Virus Guide|http://www.reedcorner.net/thomas/guides/macvirus]. But yes, keep your TM drive excluded.
The drive then stayed connected without ejecting for another 7-9 hours the next day without any random ejects before the spotlight errors struck again.
Excluding your TM drive from Spotlight doesn't stop all indexing of it: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8991.html
What I am most concerned about is, even if I get another backup successfully on the drive, will I run into any problem using Setup/Migration assistant (random ejects, freezes, corrupt data) when its time to transfer my info back to the new install of OS X and be left without my data altogether?
The backups will probably be ok, but if your internal HD is corrupted, as it seems to be, that corruption may be transferred to them.
Oct 25 19:37:15 CSKMBP1086 com.apple.backupd[12396]: Error: (-36) SrcErr:NO Copying /Library/Logs to /Volumes/Time Machine /Backups.backupdb/CSKMBP1086/2010-10-25-193558.inProgress/69A3D5EC-1F5B-495A-AE B6-CFE539F99764/Macintosh HD/Library
Now that's quite odd, indeed: the /Library/Logs folder is supposed to be +*excluded automatically+* from backups! That's controlled by a special plist deep inside OSX, so it's been altered, corrupted, or ignored, which is not a good sign.
Ordinarily, I'd suggest downloading and installing the 10.6.4 "combo" update, but that may not be enough -- you may need to reinstall OSX, too, and depending on what's wrong with your system, you may not have time, and if your system is misbehaving, it may not work anyway. If you want to, the info and download are available at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1048 Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards.
Oct 25 19:37:15 CSKMBP1086 mds[41]: (/Volumes/Time Machine/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/3ACBCEAD-A6E0-485B-9EC8-6ABCAB507777)(E rror) IndexStore in SIStoreDirytySDBChunks:Error storing dirty sdb pages: 22
That's from the mds process, used by both Spotlight and Time Machine.
Oct 25 19:37:16 CSKMBP1086 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.backupd[12396]): Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault
Another indication of possible corruption in your installation of OSX.
|
It's always a good idea to keep secondary backups, since all hardware fails, sooner or later, and no backup app is perfect. Given the apparent corruption of your installation of OSX, I'd recommend that even more strongly. See #27 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum) for some suggestions.
Sorry not to have better news or more concrete suggestions.
Let us know what Apple finds, and/or if you need help restoring.

How large of a backup drive should I get for my 500 GB MacBook Pro?

I have a MBP with a 500 GB hard drive. How large of a backup drive should I get for time machine backups? If I get a 500 GB drive will it just back up everything twice (as I have 250 used) and then delete the second backup every time it rebacks up so I will just have 2 backups? Or does time machine only backup changes every time it backs up? Thanks in advance.

tehsnyderers wrote:
OK, so I ordered a Seagate 1.5 TB external drive. That should suffice for my iMac w/ 320 GB and MBP w/ 500 GB shouldnt it?
Probably. See #1 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
Should I just partition it 750/750? or maybe 600/600/300
Use roughly the same proportions as the data on the two Macs, adjusted for how you use them. If one changes lots of big files frequently and the other doesn't, give more space to the first one.
so I have space to put random files as well?
If you put important stuff on a 3rd partition, you can have TM back it up, too (unless the drive is attached to your Airport), but it will send you a warning reminding you that it's not a good idea to have both originals and backups on the same physical disk. You'll be much better off finding another way to back that up, perhaps archiving to CDs/DVDs.
Am I able to partition it and use it with my airport extreme?
Officially, no: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/15139.html
and: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2426
But some folks (including me) are doing it anyway!
So if it works for you, just be aware it's technically unsupported, and you'll get little or no help from Apple if there are problems. And a future update may break it.

Backup drive ejects randomly

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