Hard Drive Unmounting Itself

Hi,
I have a WD MyBook USB external hard drive that used to work fine. Now, it will not mount unless I unplug its power for at least 15 minutes, plug the power back in, and then plug it into my MacBook Pro. Once it mounts, it will then unmount itself after about an hour. The power light on the hard drive never turns off, though. I've searched the discussion and can't find any similar problems. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I am having the same issue.... the USB drive unmounts at unexpected moments.
For me, it happens always with iTunes open, or when trying to transfer files to or from the external drive.
Mine is a new issue since the latest iTunes update. Apple refuses to give phone support and does not answer email event reports.

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External USB hard drive unmounts itself.

Hi all,
I have a 2.5" hard drive connected via USB to my MacBook that keeps unmounting itself. This happens under some (what seems to be) undetermined amount of time, the drive will all of a sudden unmount itself and disappear from the Finder, Disk Utility, et al.
Is there some fix, setting or work around for this? Very annoying. If not, is there a way to re-mount the hard drive without turning it off then on or reconnecting the USB cable?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Diego

I have had the same problem trying to use an USB disk as my Time Machine destination. The disk unmounts when the computer is left alone.
Inspecting the logs I discovered that the system requests the disk to unmount and that the backupd allows it. Since it only happens when I am not actively using the computer my guess is that it has to do with the computer trying to fall asleep or at least preserving it.
With time machine, this is a problem before you have made that first backup; subsequent backups are shorter and do not "time out". My solution was to keep the computer awake and, when I forgot that and the computer fell asleep, requesting a new (continuation of the) backup. Unattended about 7GB would be backed up. (There might be a solution if changing the power settings, but I didn't bother.)
Apple might consider not having the backupd allowing unmounts during a backup, or at least before one full backup has been completed.

External Hard Drive unmount itself

Help!
After a I think it was a sucessfull migration to OS X Mountain Lion, My two external hard drives and my card reader unmount itself after 30 second of be connected, every device has the same behavior, any clues to solve this issue?
Thanks in advance

I see. Then, assuming the devices don't try to pull more than 5W of power after they are mounted, I don't think you are experiencing the same issue as me.
Do you have a flash drive (better if USB 2.0)? In general these drives have less complex drivers and if they show the same behavior than it is very likely that you have a problem with your USB ports rather than your OS.
For the OS part, the following comes to mind:
1- Turn off your computer. Plug the charger off. Wait for 10 seconds. Turn it on again and try again.
2- Create another user account, log in with that account and try.
3- Restart the computer. Open Console.app. Try to mount your USB device. After it gets unmounted automatically, copy and paste the last 10 entries in Console.app
4- Reinstall the OS. It might be the case that one of your OS/kernel filels are corrupted. In any case, make sure that you back up your computer before trying this. Normally it should not overwrite any of your files, however just in case.
5- Reinstall the OS after a format. This is clean swipe and the latest choice.
On the hardware side (less likely since you mention that this started happening after the OS update), if you are still under warranty, I would suggest you to take your computer to apple and show them the same problem. They should be able to debug it better than probably anyone. If there is a hardware defect not caused by user, they almost always change your hardware. Again, before taking your laptop to apple make sure that you backed your computer and you have a genius appointment.
Let me know if you are stuck at any point.

Having trouble with USB2.0 external hard drive "unmounting" itself

ibook g4 (early 2005)
I have bought an external 120 gig hd and am trying to use it to store files on. when i transfer files to and from it, the hard drive magically unmounts itself and gives an error device removal. I don't know if the HD needs too much power or what. I have tried to update my system... and no help. what can i do... besides taking the freaking hd out of the external case and installing it in my laptop.
I have never had a problem with usb devices before on this laptop. what gives?

I'm not sure of what is the cause for this is, but because it stays alive while it's in use makes me think there is some sort of hardware sleep mode or something. I don't know enough about USB to be sure though. Maybe a temporary fix would be some sort of script we could launch at startup that reads a very small amount of data from the afflicted drive every 10 seconds or so. I have a little programming knowledge. Maybe I can figure the script out. It's definitely not a true fix, but it might get us by for the meantime.

External Hard Drive Unmounts itself

I have a WD 500Gb external hard drive which I use solely for Time machine. The other day for no reason I got the error message that the drive had not been properly ejected. Since then the Mac does not recognise that the hard drive is attached. I have tried using the Disk Utility to repair permissions and repair disk but this has had no effect. There is some crucial information in Time Machine that I need to recover. Does anyone know how I can get this drive back please.

Hello Jennsy:
Welcome to Apple discussions.
Try this:
Turn your external disk off. Trash a preference file (com.apple.timemachine.plist) and restart. Turn the external disk on. If the external disk is not recognized as a TM disk, go to system preference>time machine>select disk.
Barry
P.S. I do not have a WD disk, but I have read other posts in these forums about people that have had problems with them (FWIW).

External Hard Drive Unmounts

I posted this in the G5 discussion also.
Here's the situation. I now have a totally rebuild G5. I purchased two new G5s back in 2004. Everything worked fine until about 2 months ago. I started getting kernal panics on every start up on one of them. Long story short, thanks to the protection plan, I got both G5 processers, Graphics Card and Logic board replaced on that one. Now after several minutes of non use, my external hard drives unmount. I have to shut down, turn both drives off, start up the computer, then turn the drives on before I can use them. It happens everytime the computer sits for more that 10 minutes without use. The second G5 works just fine.
Two Duel 2.0 G5s & One Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Not having a lot of luck with that Mac.
Have a red of this White Paper, point 3 in particular:
http://au.wrs.yahoo.com/ylt=A0Je5ajuAzJFFEwBRxUL5gt.;ylu=X3oDMTB2bDEyNXM5BGNvbG8DdwRsA1dTMQRwb3MDNwRzZWMDc3IEdnRpZAM-/SIG=12jje55km/E XP=1160992110/**http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wiebetech.com%2Fpressreleases%2FFireWirePortFai lures.htm
Al

External hard drives UNMOUNT when verifying with disk utility

I have two external Lacie hard drives attached to my iMac. One is just for general backup purposes. The other is for Time Machine.
Today when I got home, for some reason the Time Machine drive was not appearing on my desktop. I rebooted the computer, the Time Machine drive reappeared, I ran a back up, everything seemed to be working fine.
To make sure the disk was ok - I ran disk utility. When I selected "verify drive" from disk utility - the disk suddenly UNMOUNTED itself, at the point of cataloging the hard drive, and the verification process stalled. What was originally a 1 minute verification suddenly changed to a 17 minute, then a 33 minute, etc.
I tried booting up in recovery mode (Command -R at startup) and the same thing happened. Are the drives going bad?

Actually - I think when disk utility verifies the disk - disk utility itself actually "unmounts" the disk during the verification process. Probably so the disk cannot be accessed by anything else but disk utility.
I feel sort of silly, because what I thought was "stalling" was really just the disk utility going through its proper verification of the catalog file, multi-linked file, directories, etc.

External Hard Drive Unmounted

Okay, So i have a 1TB external drive that is perfectly functioning i moved my setup around so that im using my TV as my monitor instead of the default screen and now when i plug the external drive in it doesnt automatically mount to my desktop.
Ive opened it in Disk Utilities and its recognised, but Unmounted.
When i try to manually mount it, it says there's something wrong and to try repairing the disk.
When i do that it says "volume repair complete" and "Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required." and is apparently stuck on this status.
I have a lot of valuable information on my hard drive, and i use it as my back up disk.
Hoping the issue is software and not hardware.
Oh and its Via USB, ive tried multipul USB Ports.
Thanks for taking the time to aid me.
-Charlie

Suggest you disconnect the TV and revert back to using the iMac screen. Then see if the external behaves itself. Post back please with what happens.

Hard Drive Turning Itself Off

Hey,
Recently my Toshiba Netbook NB505-N508BL hard drive would turn itself off and then after a few seconds, it would turn itself on and sometimes this happens right after another, sometimes a few minutes later. I turned the "turn hard drive off after X minutes" option off in windows 7, but it is still doing the turning off then on thing. When the hard drive is off, I can still surf the web and play game or listen to music, but when it's about to turn on, my screen would freeze for about 1 sec. I used the check for disk error thing, but it didn't find anything.
So I used an external optical drive and formatted the hard drive and did a fresh install of windows 7. At first I thought the problem was gone, but on the 2nd day, the hard drive started turning itself off and on again. I am not sure if there's a problem with any of my netbook devices or not, but they are all functional. My suspicion is that it's about to die, so I downloaded a few disk diagnostic programs. I ran the quick and full test, both turned out "pass". I am currently out of ideas and couldn't find anyone with the same problem online.
I have back ups of my files, so I'm not that worried. I am just really annoyed by that sound as if the system would shut down any minute. Anyone have any solution to this?
Thanks a lot!

LMAO, should have known not to ask in here XD

Why does my hard drive rename itself?

the dock application is quitting constantly, finder quits, safari quits
and when i try and do a restore my hard drive re-names itself.

For more detail, see my user tip.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3941

2nd Hard Drive Unmounting

Anyone else having the same issue with FCPX unmouting (ejecting) a second harddrive on a 2011 MBP?
Here's the situation, I'm editing with a storyline of 3 1/2 hours and I get the beachball so I wait...suddently I get a message saying I ejected a disk improperly & FCPX tries to reload my timelines in my project library but nothing load because my 2nd hard drive that I have in place of my optical drive was just unmounted - this has happened several times now. I've set my all disks to not go to sleep so it can't be that. I'm on 10.6.8, haven't upgraded to Lion until I'm finished with several projects.
Thanks!
2011 17" MBP 2.2Ghz i7 8gb, 500gb ssd hybrid + 750gb 2nd hd. 10.6.8

David Harbsmeier wrote:
Does the drive actually unmount? Or is FCPX just claiming it is? If the drive actually does unmount, does it do that any time other than when FCPX is running?
-DH
DH:
The drive does unmount. After I get the message, I verified it in Finder, Disk Utility, & a disk utility app called SpeedTools. It does not do it any other time, only when running FCPX.
The drive is a Seagate Momentus 750gb 7200rpm ST97500420AS. It's only been doing it recently since installation a week ago. It still has a 31gb free space.
I just added the drive to Spotlight privacy so it doesn't index it. Not sure what else to do...I don't want the unexpected ejects to corrupt the drive.
Thanks!

My hard drive renamed itself ??

I booted my macbook up this morning and instead of saying 'macbook HD' all it has is a ']' symbol. I looked and it says it was last modified a couple months ago when I put a new hard drive in. So it doesn't say it was just modified. I'm so confused. My camera was also on when I booted it up. I had to completely turn it off to get it to turn off. Rebooting it didn't turn it off.
Is something wrong with my computer? Why did it rename itself?

Try resetting your SMC, trash your Finder preferences and reboot.
HD > User > Library > Preferences > com.apple.finder.plist
Resetting your SMC.
Resetting the System Management Controller >>
Dave M.
MacOSG Founder/Ambassador  An Apple User Group  iTunes: MacOSG Podcast
Creator of 'Mac611 - Mobile Mac Support' (designed exclusively for an iPhone/iPod touch)

External Hard drive ejects itself

I recently bought a My Passport Essential USB Hard Drive. I backed up all of my music from itunes on it. Now when I try to update my ipod, my external ejects itself. I think it may be because of a lack of power in the usb ports but I'm not sure how to move forward. Can I use firewire on this hard drive or should I purchase a powered usb hub? The drive works fine otherwise.

The best thing for you to do is get a powered USB hub, it will help you i have one that has 5 powered devices pluged into it and it has no problems...
reb19 wrote:
I recently bought a My Passport Essential USB Hard Drive. I backed up all of my music from itunes on it. Now when I try to update my ipod, my external ejects itself. I think it may be because of a lack of power in the usb ports but I'm not sure how to move forward. Can I use firewire on this hard drive or should I purchase a powered usb hub? The drive works fine otherwise.
Brandon
Best Buy Associate | Geek Squad Agent
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External Hard Drive Ejecting itself and now not being recognised

I've been using a Western Digital hard drive for the past 4 months and it's been great. However recently it has decided to randomly eject itself. This was getting irritating but could live with it.
However now it isn't even being recognised by Finder even though it shows up in Disk Utility. I'm puzzled and worried - that hard drive has all my music and photos on but i can't access it
I'd be very grateful for any ideas on how to go about getting it back!?
Thank you!
Chloe

I have the same problem. The Western Digital hard drive doesn't show up on my desktop when I plug it in, although it shows up on disk utility. I would also appreciate any advice on getting my computer to recognize it.

External Hard Drive Unmounted During Relocate Masters

I was relocating my masters to an external USB drive when the drive spontaneously unmounted. Now I don't really know what the situation is -- only some of the files transferred, obviously. Does Aperture know where all the masters are? When I tried to do another "Relocate Masters" with the hard drive plugged in to re-re-locate them back to my internal drive, it says some are missing but it doesn't specify which or how many or what it thinks is going on. I just don't know how to proceed. I just want things back the way they were.
Maybe I should just start fresh from a Vault backup? Or is there a way to fix this?
Thanks.

To look for the images with missing masters turn on badge overlays in the browser view. All problematic images should show badges with an arrow and a yellow warning triangle like in the screenshot above. To find all of them quickly create a smart album and add a rule "File Status" is "Misisng". This album will contain all of the images with missing masters. To get an overview over the general state of your masters, create several smart albums with all the "File Status" options, i.e. "offline".
For the missing masters set the metadata display to display the filename. Then use Spotlight to search for the file. If Spotlight finds the file, use "Show All in Finder", like in the example below, where I searched for missing Australia images.
If Spotlight cannot find the image, then those may have been mooved outside your home folder.
Open a Terminal window and enter:
open /Volumes
(when your external Volume is connected):
This will open a Finder Window with all volumes connected to your computer. This way you can browse and files and folder at the root level of your drives.
Good Luck
Léonie

Hard Drive Unmounting Itself

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