DISK NOT EJECTED PROPERLY keeps popping up Big Sur 11.3.1

Hi, I have similar issues with 2 of my hard drives, WD passport and elements on my M1 MBA.. These 2 drives work fine with my older MacBook Pro late 2013 on Mojave and my Windows setup but cannot seem to work well on Big Sur..

I've been running a TB2 24tb G-Speed Shuttle XL on my iMac for a few years now. On Mojave I never saw the 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' message. Worked perfectly as expected.

Once I updated to Catalina it started showing up every few days when the computer was asleep. I might see 1 or 2 messages when I logged on in the AM. I updated to Big Sur hoping this bug was resolved and now I see 10-20 of these messages upon awakening the computer. If I eject the drive before putting the computer to sleep it will still result in 10-20 messages.

The only "fix" is to physically disconnect the drive or turn the iMac off. This is not ideal as I am a video editor and backups are scheduled to run at night when I'm not using the machine.

I have spent hours researching this issue and tried every tip/fix I have seen. There are simply no energy settings, cable, reformatting, resetting PRAM etc etc. that resolves the issue. What I have learned is:

1. There are a ton of people that have this issue.
2. The issue is 100% with Mac OS.
3. Seems to be getting worse with each update.
4. Is not on Apple's radar (which seems very un-apple)
5. This is such a bummer that it would be the only subject I would discuss with Tim Apple at a social gathering.

Every time I try to copy a directory from my external USB drive to the SSD on my Mac, the disk ejects and the copy fails. It is 100% reproducible. The USB disk is connected via a USB hub with separate power supply to ensure enough power. I can access the disk, read from it and copy files to it. I use it with Logic to keep my sound library on, and that works fine.

I've just updated to macOS Big Sur 11.5.2 and a bunch of issues started happening:

1. My external disk WD 1TB keeps disconnecting. A pop-up message that says that the disk was not ejected properly when I did nothing to eject or disconnect the disk. It's simply annoying!
2. Checking First Aid on DiskUtility it runs and the result is everything ok... which is not, otherwise the disk would not keep disconnecting!
3. Had to restart the or four times to get the MacBookPro running as expected (as before), and even then, some apps even the finder keeps crashing and becomes irresponsive.
4. At some stage I had to force shutdown "a la Windows" and back to start the system again.

After two forced shutdowns the system recovered, yet, the external disk is being disconnected automatically after this update.

Questions:

1. Will there be an urgent fix, and when?
2. Have Apple been bought by Microsoft? It looks like so or maybe not because my (horrible) Windows machine which serves only to display Google Analytics live tracking has kept working like a mac (weird)!

Comment: in a short period of days, macOS Big Sur has been updated for bug fixes with a frequency that reminds me of Windows in the '90s!! The only thing missing is "the blue screen"!

Hoping to have a stable update that fixes at least this bug of external disks being disconnected.

SMC, PRAM reset, etc.

Formatted drives in several formats, exFAT, APFS, FAT32, Mac OS Extended.

Tried different cables (even thunderbolt certified), different hard drive caddies, tried different ports, tried disconnecting everything except those drives, tried different hard drive brands, restarted several times, ran first aid, reinstalled the OS, etc

Looked all over google about the error 100006 and some random errors trying to erase, partition or reformatting the drive. They get ejected at random, quite often as soon as I plug them they keep getting ejected so I can't even do anything on them at all.

Plugged them into windows and voila! they work just fine!

ADATA SX8200 PRO and Toshiba NVMe M2 drives. Tried several brands for hard drive caddies. Seems like this is a long time error on such a renowned brand, how come this hasn't been fixed? Lots of threads and no solutions! Some manage to get them working, others never do!

This is apparently a universal problem for BigSur.

I hope Apple will solve it soon with an update.

this issue is so bad that it rendered my lacie mobile drive unusable, replaced lacie but lost 4 days of hard work. apple needs some serious spanking

Same here. Seagate 2TB and 4TB on MacBook Pro 2018 running Big Sur 11.6. The 4TB ejects every now and then, but of course always at the wrong moment, like when finishing a complicated video edit. The 2TB disk (my Time Machine disk) is the real PITA, ejecting umpty times a week and in the process screwing up Finder and other apps that are running, only to be fixed by forced reboot. Started with Catalina. Disks are ok when checked in Disk Utility and work fine on older MBP running High Sierra. Apple, please fix ASAP!

It is helpful to know I'm not the only one whose drives are spontaneously ejecting. I've been trying different connections and it is occurring on multiple drives. Mostly USB 3.0. These are all LaCie drives and on at least one if I hookup via Firewire through Thunderbolt, it seems stable. At least one drive has become corrupt due to these issues. I hope Apple can understand that the only thing that changed was their software/hardware. This started for me after 'upgrading' to an iMac M1 and Big Sur. I remember the days when Window machines were this unpredictable, change is the only constant.

Upvote this topic as my Time Machine drive keeps getting ejected. Big Sur 11.6

After dealing with the dreaded "disk not ejected properly" error for months while running Big Sur 11.6 I think i have finally seen the light at the end of the tunnel. I upgraded macOS to Monterey 12.0 this week and my Mac Pro (Late 2013) seems to have stabilized. While the "eject" continued to show up initially after I completed the install, the "eject" errors seem to have disappeared 100%. My setup was related to the use of a Promise Pegasus R6. I tried everything from cable swaps, to firmware updates, to Mac Power Management settings. Now I can only hope that future updates (and I know there will be many) to Monterey will not bring back the dreaded "eject" error.

Hmm this was never a problem for me with Catalina or BigSur - now upgraded to Monterey and just started happening.

Same problem here. Just started happening after upgrading to Monterey. I have an external HGST G-Drive.

Same here. Just updated to Monterey. I have a WD Element and it ejects when I try to access it.

Providing more insight while I continue to troubleshoot.

• OS: 12.0.1 Monterey
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports)

Ext Hardware Issue:

• ORICO Dual Bay HDD USB-C 3.1 Docking Station
• HGST 4TB Drive 2014

Have identified an issue with potential conflict in keyboard shortcut.

• Todoist App allows for quick entry using the Q key. Each time that I select Q key, I received Disk Not Ejected Properly error notification.

• When trying to quit Todoist app, Command + Q also caused error notification. Also could not close Todoist. Force Quit Todoist. Restarted. Eject error notification appears to be occurring less but not solved.

• Reset PRAM/SMC. No change.

• Ran First Aid on HDD. No change.

Perhaps a conflict that pressing Q is being logged as a partial eject command somewhere in OSX?

Same thing here, it's very annoying. On a brand new Macbook Pro 16 M1 Max with a brand new Sandisk 1to external ssd.

STILL HAPPENING ON 12/10/21. I switched over to Apple because I was tired of the unstable Windows environment. People go to Apple to avoid this type of thing because of the R&D it puts into it's software and product development. I'm starting to regret this decision on a number of things, but THIS TYPE OF THING shouldn't be one of them......

Mine says it's ejected (it's my time machine disk that is permanently plugged in) but actually seems to go on working. I would eject it properly and then set it up again, but I don't really seem to need to. I'm on a 2021 iMac running Monterey, so it's still happening.

I've been having the same problem with Mjoave 10.14.6 for AGES now on my 2009 Mac Pro. Directly related problem, in the middle of using the machine, on, working on anything at all, a drive will eject. And I mean it doesn't even show up in Disk Utility in Mac OS, or the one in terminal. I have to reboot the computer for the disk to show back up. The disk is formatted as ExFAT so I can access the files on my windows & linux machines. But I've had the same thing happen to a disk that was formatted jhfs+. And it ALWAYS happens to ANY external drive I have connected, if the computer goes/is put to sleep. Upon waking, it tells me that every external volume was ejected improperly. I've never had this problem before. Rebooting every time this happens is INSANE. Yes, I know having to do it if you leave the machine overnight, but if I'm directly in the middle of something? Awful!

Oh, a little PS: One time this happened to the drive, tried running first aid on it, on the disk, it said it was fine, on the volume, it failed. Because it was ExFAT, I pulled the drive, put it in my windows 11 machine, and ran the default check disk on it, and it took a while (the disk is 8TB) and fixed it and was fine. Put it back in my mac? Failed a few hours later that day.

My Mac Pro is Mojave 10.14.6 (checked before posting this, and frequently - no updates available) Early 2009 2x 3.46GHz 6core Intel Xeons 48GB 1333MHz DDR3. The system boot disk is a sandisk 1TB SSD

It seems the problem is that Big Sur and Monterey are using more power than Catalina, and not delivering enough power to the hub to keep the hard drive alive. In my case Monterey crashed every time Time Machine finished which was driving me mad. The solution is to use a powered hub, no disk ejection since I installed one (or you could throw away the perfectly good hub and hard drive and buy a powered hard drive, sending Apple the bill).

Hmm seems I spoke too soon. Just got another couple of "disk ejected" notifications, even tho' the hard drive is plugged into a powered hub. Still, it worked fine for 48 hours which is better than ejecting (and crashing) every 30 minutes or more frequently. The latest occurred after rebooting the Mac with the hub plugged in, I'm going to try only plugging in the hub after booting to see if it is more stable. Definitely seems to be a power issue.

I'm having the exact same issue:

Machine: MacBook Pro (M1) OS: macOS Monterey 12.0.1 External Hard Drive: WD Elements

Nothing solves it. Terrible experience!

Ditto. Brand new MacBook Pro running Monterey, Brand New LaCie 4TB Rugged USB-C drive. Drive ejects constantly, about every 5 mins or more frequently. Started basically as soon as I attached the EHD to new Mac. Extremely disappointing.

Brand new Mac mini M1 running macOS Monterey 12.1, USB-A HFS+ stick. The LG UltraFine 27UN83A-W monitor is connected to the Mac mini thru a USB-C cable.

When I set the Mac mini to sleep, I get different behaviors depending on the actual stick connection :

A) stick connected directly to the Mac mini => no error

B) stick connected to the LG UltraFine monitor hub => manually eject stick prior to going to sleep => no error, stick reappears on desktop when sleep ends

C) stick connected to the LG UltraFine monitor hub => "Disk not ejected properly" error when sleep ends / stick reappears on desktop (apparently undamaged).

When powering off, the stick reappears normally on the desktop without any error after powering on.

Clearly, having a hub on the connection path creates problems, likely because the hub is unpowered when the monitor goes to sleep after the Mac does.