Mountain Lion improperly ejects external disks

Has anybody else had this problem? Ever since I updated to Mountain Lion, my external hard drives are periodically and seemingly randomly ejected, giving me an error message about improperly ejected disks. I have two drives, daisy-chained in firewire on a 2012 iMac.
Any help would be welcome. Thank you in advance for your help.

Thanks for the help so far. To answer some questions,
1. I have two G-Drive Q hard drives, both fairly recent, MacOS Extended formatting.
2. Both show up in disk utility, when they show up on the desktop.
3. They are both powered with their own power cords.
4. I have run Disk Utility on both, but just recently and don't yet know if that was a solution. The one that I use for Time Machine couldn't repair permissions, due to that command being grayed out. Not sure why?
5. the problem onlly started when I switched to Mountain Lion, therefore I suspect OS problems.
I will try switching the order of the daisy-chain, and see if that has any effect.

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How can I download Mountain Lion onto an external disk?

Hello everyone
My macbook pro hard drive was failing and at a genius appointment the technician said I could either pay for them to do the replacement or do it at home, since it would cost me nearly three times less. I bought the hard drive which is physically installed but my mac was not working before the replacement so I couldnt create any copies of the content, sofware, etc which means that now I have no idea how to install the sofware again... I've read about downloading Mountain Lion off the Apple Store onto an external disk and then rebooting the Mac from the external disk but I cant use my apple ID on any other Mac that isnt mine so I'm totally lost... Any help, please?

I'm assuming the grey disks are installation CDs that came with the mac?
Correct. But since you're trying to get back to Mountain Lion, you don't need them. If you had created a Mountain Lion bootable flash drive from your original download, you could have started up to that and installed ML directly.
Since it appears you don't, than what you do need is a retail Snow Leopard disk. If you don't have one, it can be purchased directly from Apple for $20. Install that and update it to at least 10.6.6 to get the App Store app on the drive. Then you can login to your App Store account and retrieve and install Mountain Lion.

I'm not crying. Is there a way to install Mountain Lion on a bootable disk on latest iMac cuz mine shipped without an OS?

I could cry right now. After decades of being an Apple fan, something is happening for the worse and issues with every Apple product I own 2 iphones, 2 iMacs, 15" Macbook Pro, and iPad Mini (no issues here, just slow connecting to App Store and can never seem to download updates) has left me disenchanted. I do have a question about Mountain Lion but just airing out grievances.
Ok, to the point. I have the new 27" iMac that was just released. Was delivered and opened the box, turned it on, and there was a flashing folder icon. No OS, wonderful. I live in Brooklyn and not trying to lug a 27" computer onto the train nor should I have to pay for a cab to resolve this. Anyway, I tried to go into Recovery but it started doing an Internet Recovery with a download time of 9 hours. Um, no thanks. So I downloaded the latest version of Mountain Lion from the App store on my old iMac and made a boot disk onto an external via Apples instructions. Plugged it into new iMac lemon, go into recovery mode, see the bootable drive, click on it to reinstall and it gives me a crossed out circle icon and shuts down.
What am I doing wrong? I have pretty decent broadband and did start the internet recovery process now until I find a better solution online. After 5 hours, Internet recovery finished and clicked on Reinstall Mountain Lion to which it's asking me to download the OS again and with a 13 hour download time!!!! What's going on here? What was the purpose of internet recovery taking 5 hours only to download it again at another 13 hours???
Question is, is there something I should be doing differently? Is there a way to install Mountain Lion from a bootable disk? This is mind blowingly the dumbest thing I've encountered with Apple. Got a problem with your OS? No problem, just download a 4.4GB file every incident.
Thank you.

You can't grab a installer from another Mac and expect it to run. The newer Macs have newer hardware which requires special drivers. If the version that boots the iMac is a special build, it won't work any other way than Internet Recovery.
If it was me, I'd take it right back. You have no idea if the OS is just corrupted, the hard drive is dead, or what. I wouldn't take my chances with it.

Hard drive died... How do I reinstall Mountain Lion onto an external drive?

I have Time Machine and two extra external drives but now I cannot boot from the Hard Drive to reinstall Mountain Lion. I have a recovery partition from TechTool but it does not include Time Machine or the App Store. My computer boots into the TechTool disk but my hard drive is not shown. Disk Utility does not see my hard drive either.
Any suggestions?
TIA

Sorry, I'm confused.
The recovery partition from Tech Tool, this is on the internal HD or on a CD/DVD?
Is this the same thing as the TechTool disk that your computer can boot into?
Where is the Disk Utility that cannot see your hard drive? Is it on the Apple recovery partition on your internal drive? Are you saying that Disk Utility on your Apple recovery partition cannot see your boot partition?
It sounds like your internal boot partition won't work, but the internal drive itself is OK (i.e., Disk Utility, on your Apple recovery partition, doesn't see the normal boot partition), or at least OK to the extent that the Apple Recovery partition can run.
If you install Mountain Lion on your external drive and use it as the boot drive for your computer, it will be very slow, and you won't be happy. I'd forget that idea.
Assuming I am thinking correctly about your situation, I would try to repair your HD. Your options would be:
a safe boot Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? and then disk utility
boot into single user mode and see if you can repair your hard drive Repair Your Hard Disk in Single User Mode | Everything Macintosh
internet recovery OS X: About OS X Recovery
recovery disk assisant, if you have made one already OS X Recovery Disk Assistant v1.0
If none of that works, then I'd try and wipe the entire drive and start over. I'd try to do that from internet recovery. Hopefully one of your external drives has backups on it.
If that doesn't work, then I'd replace the drive.

Mountain Lion install onto external drive?

I installed Mountain Lion onto an external Hard Drive that had a bootable Snow Leopard installed by mistake while I was booted from Snow Leopard on my iMac. It seems to work and I am able to access files and applications on the external drive when booted from the Mountain Lion external drive. Mail works, Drop Box works. I thought you have to be booted from the drive to which you want to upgrade the operating system. Have I missed something here or should I start over to first boot from the external drive and then do the upgrade to Mountain Lion?

You can upgrade from either disk. The install program allows you to select where do you want to install Mountain Lion.

I want to move a bootable copy of Mountain Lion to an external HD before I upgrade to Maverics. How do I do this?

I am preparing to upgrade to Mavericks. I want to put a bootable copy of Mountain Lion on an external hard drive so that I may run apps that aren't yet compatible with Mavericks. How do I do this?

You will need an external HD and either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. Both will create bootable clones of your of your system. One is not "better" than the other, to be honest it's simple user preference in the UI. Once you have created your clone boot from it to test and once you have validated it works then you can download Mavericks and begin using it. You can Google for each app and download them, each cost approximately $40-$60.
In the event you want to go back to ML the clone will provide that freedom. Or if you simply need to use ML to get to Apps that only run on that version of OS X then you can. I would recommend getting an EHD that has the fastest connection your computer has output for. For example if your machine has a Thunderbolt connection, get a EHD that supports Thunderbolt.

Installing Mountain Lion onto an external hard Drive

Hi
I am running snow Leoprd and what to keep this as my main OS on my internal HD due to work, I want to install Mountain Lion onto an external Hard Drive and boot and run from an external HD as opposed to my internal
I will be likely to be using a thunderbolt connection for the external HD
Has anyone had any experience with this and any tip or faults?
I will be using Logic mainly]

Works just like installing on an internal drive. Just be sure to choose the correct target before clicking on the Install button.
If you have sufficient space on your internal hard drive you could also make a partition on it in which to install Mountain Lion. This will be faster and more convenient that an external drive.

After installing Mountain Lion doesn't external hard drives mount or stay mounted. Anybody else with this major problem?

After installing Mountain Lion doesn't external hard drives mount or stay mounted.
I have tried resetting my Mac's PRAM but the problem still remains.
Even USB memory sticks are unmounted efter a few seconds.
Anybody else with this major problem?

I have the same problem, although mine has not been solved by ESET update, finder settings, PRAM & SMC resets or anything else.
Don't get it, my external hard drive still works on both my housemates computers - one macbook pro (with snow leopard) and one dell, just not on mine with mountain lion.
Any ideas for me guys?

RECOVERING FORGOTTON ADMINISTRATOR PASSWORD FOR MACBOOK PRO WITH OS MOUNTAIN LION REQUIRES (A) OPTICAL DISK READER or (B) ANOTHER COMPUTER. I HAVE NONE OF THE TWO. I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO LOGIN TO APPLE SUPPORT AND COMMUNITIES. NO SOLUTION IS AVAILABLE

RECOVERING FORGOTTON ADMINISTRATOR PASSWORD FOR MACBOOK PRO WITH OS MOUNTAIN LION REQUIRES (A) OPTICAL DISK READER or (B) ANOTHER COMPUTER. I HAVE NONE OF THE TWO. I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO LOGIN TO APPLE SUPPORT AND COMMUNITIES. NO SOLUTION IS AVAILABLE

Terribly sorry Joseph Kriz. I had absolutley no intention of annoying anyone. This was the first time I have been communicating in a discussion group, and as I wrote my comments I had no idea how my typing would reflect and where my question would be going. Hope my unintentional typing will be forgiven and causes no further agitation.The only additional comment I can make on your response is that "I do not use capital letters or CAPS LOCK while I try to enter my administrator password". Thank you for guiding me

MacBook Pro refuses to eject external disk - How do I make this stop?

So I have an issue that's been bugging me for a couple weeks, now (from even before I upgraded to Mountain Lion), that I, really, need a solution to. I have a 1TB external drive divided into 3 partitions. I eject it whenever I wish to remove it from my computer, but, lately, there is 1 partition that, constantly, refuses to be ejected. I get the usual warning in this instance:
The disk [volume name] wasn't ejected because one or more programs may be using it.
I click "Try Again" and it doesn't work. It works with "Force Eject", but I don't want to cause any unnecessary damage to the contents of the drive. The next time it happened, I ran the following in Terminal:
sudo lsof -xf +d "/Volumes/[volume name]"
This told me that the "mds" process was accessing the disk, which means Spotlight was using it. I clicked the "Spotlight" icon in the menu bar and Spotlight didn't appear to be doing anything. I can't quit the "mds" process in Activity Monitor, because the process just starts again. The only thing that worked was logging out, then, logging back in, then, I could, immediately eject the volume.
Of course, the next time I plugged the disk in, the same thing happened.
How do I stop this from happening? How can I stop Spotlight from, constantly, holding this disk captive? I shouldn't have to log out to eject a disk.
Please advise.

Cerebro,
I am in the same boat but I think you could help me and many others by telling us what what in the folders that were keeping your G-Raid or HARD DRIVE from UNMOUNTING?
I can force quit.......and even force quit to get the DiskUtility to treat that like a unmount.....
but in my case I may have installed software from AUTODESK that uses WIRETAPPING on the EXTERNAL DRIVE because that is the AUTHORIZATION method and also the CONTENT method they use to allow me to use their software for FREE as a STUDENT or EDU.
But I tried to kill these processes in the Activity Monitor and it just comes back or creates new numbers..
so I am not sure if that is the culprit...
I had read other culprits....like other 3rd party BACKUP SOFTWARE (not Time MACHINE) that was hanging the computer......
I am wondering why you had APPLE CARE help you and they couldn't even find the solution....
so without you sharing with me even in a private email as you didn't share what the FOLDER was for software.
I would be much appreciated as if this is the similar case then I can contact them and just ask them the workaround if it is not an APPLE thing......
Most POWER USERS that understand MOUNTAIN LION or SNOW LEOPARD and UNIX for that matter know the TERMINAL like a second language...
I wish I did but I don't yet.....
I really need to take a class or just read these ADMINISTRATION BOOKS for APPLE CERTIFICATION to understand such things.....
Please let me know anyone else reading this if you have some good ideas? or IRC CHAT or other FORUMS that strictly deal and discuss APPLE OSX and UNIX PROGRAMMING as well as NETWORKING without the FILE SYSTEM.....most of this is ADMINISTRATION LEVEL or root level knowledge, and should be offered as a MANUAL when you buy the COMPUTER........or at least a FREE PDF instead of having to pay the 50 or 60 dollars for the current flavor of OSX.....
I paid a 3 dollars for SNOW LEOPARD was happy updating school MAC LABS in LAUSD with that knowledge...but now I am MOUNTAIN LION 10.8 so I am wondering is it really worth the upgrade BOOK is that SYSTEM that much DIFFERENT than SNOW LEOPARD? can anyone tell me?
thanks so much
singleton
PS- - my problem is the same I have a G-RAID that will not EJECT unless I FORCE QUIT the DRIVE.....
I can't figure out what is causing it to hang......how should I go about finding out exactly what it is?
thanks

I want to install mountain Lion on an external drive without uninstalling Maverick from my computer

When I want to get mountain Lion, apple store telles me that I have Maverick installed. How can I charge the M Lion version to install on an external drive?

You would need to download a copy from the Mac App Store or already have a copy of the installer. Then you can make a bootable USB drive using DiskMaker X (http://liondiskmaker.com). Once you created the USB disk, you can boot from that and install Mt Lion on the external drive.

Mountain Lion sleep ejects USB hub/devices

I just switched to mountain lion (10.8.5) and when my MacBook Air goes to sleep on it's own it ejects my USB hub, to which my keyboard and external hard drive are connected. This was not a problem with 10.7x. Can you help?

I just switched to mountain lion (10.8.5) and when my MacBook Air goes to sleep on it's own it ejects my USB hub, to which my keyboard and external hard drive are connected. This was not a problem with 10.7x. Can you help?

Can I dual boot windows 7 and mountain lion with an external hard drive.

I have Mac OSX mountain lion installed and running on my 2TB external hard drive. Boot camp says that I have to use the default flash storage that came with my computer.. Is there a way to put it on my external hard drive if I partition it? I also am having a problem when I tried to use the default storage the setup would not let me format it to NTFS

By default, Boot Camp formats the drive with FAT32. That's because Windows XP could be installed with FAT32 so, in order to write on that partition on Mac OS X, Boot Camp used it instead of NTFS.
If you want to install Windows 7 (it's the only version that your Mac supports), you will have to format the Boot Camp partition in NTFS manually. To do it, just start the Windows installation as usual but, on partitioning screen, choose "BOOTCAMP" volume, press "Drive options" and then, Format, so the partition will be formatted in NTFS and you will be able to install Windows

Mountain Lion destroys 3 external hard drives any reason why?

New Mac Book Pro Retina, Mountain Lion OS a all updates. Each external USB hardrive including the main back up 3TB external
blows apart with a message you can no longer read or write to this drive, the exteranl, back it up immediately. Go to do that
it rebooted and now that drive as well as 2 others are not accessible.
I have put 2 of the externals on my older Mac Book and I can get them to mount, and had to buy a new 4TB exteranal for
backing up the older externals. I don't dare put that new one on the Mountian Lion new Mac Book Pro
as I already lost years of work on the 3TB drive that will not mount at all. Something is terribly wrong
with this box or the OS Anyone have any guidance? I dread having all my externals and I have many that hold scads of my
work, etc. The 3T may not be repairable as I can't get it to be seen by any other G5Duo or Mac Books 2 different ones
all run on Snow lepoard
Help?

As far as the older drives go, all may not be lost.
It is possible that the USB interface in the box may
be somehow hosed and the drive itself may be fine.
You could pull the old drive out of the case and use
one of the many USB->SATA adapters and hook up to
the another computer. This would at least tell you if
you have lost all your data. Make sure you get one
with external powering like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002
Or if somehow the drive is corrupted, at least try to use
some recovery software to get te data back. If the drive
is good, you can put it in another case. If you have that
much at stake, you have nothing to lose but a few bucks
(price of a good meal soewhere) by trying this.
BTW, what brand are these HDDs? Mountain Lion in and
of itself should not be causing the drives to be unreadable.
There may be a serious hardware issue with the MBP.

How do I resinstall mountain lion without an install disk?

I have an older macbook that doesn't support Lion or Mountain Lion. The person who owned it previously said they "deleted" the system preferences application. I didn't believe them, but sure enough, nothing will allow you into system preferences. I want to reinstall the operating system and clean it out, but I don't have any install disks, not even an old OS X disk.
Any suggestions? Is there a way to make a bootable OS X 10.6 disc? Is there a legitimate ISO available? I've seen a bunch on torrents that look like they're bloated.
Thanks

Call apple care at 1 800 692 7753 - give them the computers serial number. You can purchase replacement discs for that computer. They charge $16 for each disc. You need two of them.

Mountain Lion improperly ejects external disks

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