DISK NOT EJECTED PROPERLY keeps popping up Big Sur 11.3.1

I started experiencing this problem only while in the process of disabling iCloud. Before that, everything worked fine for more than two months. Now my both external harddrives will eject constantly. Anyone else experiencing this in connection with disabling or having already disabled iCloud? Also, in my case the problem gets accentuated when external devices get hot. I am going to try the power related approach. I will post if it makes a difference.

Ditto for me. 2013 MacBook Pro with 125GB internal.

Using external hard drives for storage. Purchased two new 2TB Seagate OneTouch - one to transfer from older external drive and one to replace older Time Machine external drive.

The older one is a 2TB Seagate Passport, it hangs in a lot better than the newer OneTouch. Sadly, I am now copying files from the newer OneTouch back to the Passport. Purchased ($$$ and time....) a Western Digital 2TB SSD - maybe I'll return it after reading this thread.

Lastly, Seagate has great customer service, not sure why they are not talking to Apple on this...

Like many others who have posted here, I've had this problem for quite a long time, both with Big Sur and after upgrading to Monterrey. The strange this is that it only happens with one of my drives. When I tried to run a First Aid in Disk Utility (for the disk that keeps mysteriously 'ejecting' itself — no pun intended), the operation failed.

Running First Aid on “Main Backup - White” (disk4s2)

Checking file system and repairing if necessary and if possible.
Volume was successfully unmounted.
Performing fsck_apfs -y -x /dev/rdisk4s2
error: container /dev/rdisk4 is mounted.
File system check exit code is 65.
Restoring the original state found as mounted.
File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845)

Operation failed…

No idea what is going on...

January 6, 2021 - "Desk Not Ejected Properly" occurring continually, even when disks are clearly connected on Finder and music playing on iTunes. What can I say? Apple ain'ts what it usta B." Just dumb stuff.

Same problem. Bought Mac Mini M1 and connect an external hard disk (Crucial 1To SSD). After a couple of seconds, pop up about "Disk Not Ejected Properly" appears and others follow... (tips: use "killall NotificationCenter" in terminal to close all notifications in one shoot)

On my old iMac mid2011 with High Sierra, no problem, the same external disk works fine...

I have a similar problem. Very annoying.

Machine: 2021 MacBook Pro 14 inch M1Pro chip External HD: 4 TB Seagate

Things started falling apart as soon as I upgraded to the last version of Monterey (12.1). The external disk self-disconnects every 2 minutes or so. I have all my music saved on the external disk, so now I can no longer properly sync my iPhone to update the changes (new music added). Interestingly enough, I didn't experience any problems with Big Sur. I thought that the drive's connecting cable was the problem, so I bought a new one. The problem persists. Very disappointing.

Cannot work with an external G Drive (backup) any more because Disk Not Ejected properly message occurs every time my computer sleeps. I also lose the external monitor and if I want it back I must unplug it or restart my Macbook pro.

Apple support instructed reformat the hard drive. It didn't fix it but wasted a day of my life and important work. Apple is making life more complicated by the moment - a huge departure from the whole concept of Apple.

Big Sur and flash drive problems here too. Has anyone else noticed these forums are just a place to leave a comment about a issue- can't say i have ever came here to apples forum and found a solution to whatever problem I was having...

                                                          **[FINALLY GOT THE FLASH DRIVE TO WORK]**

So I kept getting this error (Volume timed out while waiting to eject) while trying to eject the flash drive using terminal (diskutil eject disk3). The disk was not showing up in finder and was "grayed out" in disk utility. I ran first aid on the flash drive using disk utility and got an error. I thought the flash drive was done eventhough I just bought it on Amazon a few months ago (256 GB mini ssd). So i kept trying to eject it using terminal (diskutil eject disk3) and after several tries it finally worked! I then reformatted it and it seems to be good now, I can now see it in finder. I will report back..

1. paste this command in terminal: diskutil list
2. Identifed my target disk as disk3
3. I then ran this command to eject the disk: diskutil eject disk3

Like i said after several tries, it finally worked and the disk ejected. I was certain that the disk was bad

Hey all - been racking my brain last few weeks with the same issue; macOS v12.1. Seems to apply to all drive types I have: thunderbolt-2 mechanical, usb-3 SSD and SD card. REALLY causing huge distractions for back-up etc.

Wondering if @Apple would like to chip in on this and give us a steer? I see similar questions outside the dev forum too. Would be great to have some formal acknowledgement and feedback to other potential actions.

I have a new 2021 14 inch M1Pro Macbook Pro, and ive been having this issue where the drive will eject when the laptop goes to sleep. i have my backups and my music plugins for Logic Pro X, and im not ALWAYS on my macbook so i gotta close the lid sometimes. ive disabled as many sleeping or disk sleep things that i can think of and it still ejects. Everytime the disk gets ejected id have to reinitialize my plugins if a project was left open. closing a project does help but the disk still ejects and i have to make sure i close the project everytime. i JUST upgraded from a 2010 MBP and ive never had this issue. Any solutions yet still? I have a WD My Passport 2TB external drive, with a USB micro B Superspeed to USB type C cord. when its connected and on it works fine. only when the computer goes to sleep.

Got the same problem. Macbook Air M1, Monterey (12.1) Lacie rugged 4tb USB-C. Had the problem some months back, and suddenly the HDD stoppet working. Couldn't even access it on my Linux workstation with fdisk or any tools available. Thought it was a bad HDD so I returned it and got a new one. But still the same problem. Disk not ejected properly.

I just got a 5TB Lacie I'm on Monterey 12.2.1 and I get a dozen disconnect messages when my computer is asleep, such a pain! Thanks for the post, I've tried everything too- I hope they fix this real soon..

Same issue here on Monterey 12.0.1 on a new M1 Max 16" MBP. When the computer goes to sleep it continually ejects my Thunderbolt 2 (using adapter) Promise Pegasus RAID.

Same Problem with Monterey 12.2.1 and my Macbook Air M1. It ejects ANY external hd, or even my SD card reader spontaneously and frequently, rendering any sort of work impossible. This is crazy. My M1 is now an expensive paper weight and Apple has no solution???!

Still happens on Monterey (12.2.1) with MacBook Pro M1 2020. I noticed first this with time machine, so I reformatted my external 1TB Seagate drive as encrypted, case-sensitive APFS to do backup manually, but it is still happening with or without a hub. The disk ejects randomly, or it can become extremely slow even to list a directory (having maybe a dozen entries only).

Same here, brand new M1 iMac, two LaCie's ejecting every couple of minutes. I can't work, I can't back up, it's a nightmare.

It seems to be worse when they're both plugged in, and the 4TB connected via USB-c does it more often than the old 1TB which is connected through a USB (which is in a hub going into the USB-C).

Sort it out Apple, totally unacceptable.

Hello to every single tortured soul encountering this plaguing problem on MacOS. For me it happens at seemingly random times, on my brand new MacBook Pro 14", with M1 Pro chip, Monterey 12.2.1 (21D62). Yesterday I lost 90 minutes of very precious time, working on a deadline, trying to make my external ADATA SSD work. I constantly had it "not properly ejected" by the system. Tried messing with power settings, restarting the laptop, but with no luck.

THE ONLY thing that seems to have helped is the following:

1. Plugging the external drive into the MacBook
2. Waiting for it to be recognized by the system
3. Ejecting it in Finder.
4. Unplugging the drive physically
5. Plugging in again

Since I did this "magic" I had no new connection problems.

I hope this is a temporary workaround and that this might help someone else.

Cheers!

I had the same disk auto-eject issue but after many trials, seemed to get this configuration working as follows:

MacBook Pro 13 2017, 4 Thunderbolt 3 port. OS Monterey 12.2.1. An External HGST G Drives 4T with Thunderbolt interface, Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formatted. Another External HGST G Drive 4T with older USB interface, APFS formatted, used as a back up drive in Time Machine. This drive connects to the MacBook using an USB to Thunderbolt adapter.

Energy saver: Enable Prevent computer to go to sleep when display off. Disable Put Hard disk to sleep ....

I never had problem with the HGST Drive with the Thunderbolt port. But I kept getting Improper Disk Eject error message with the older HGST Drive with the USB port when it plugged in to the right Thunderbolt ports on the MacBook.

Problem seemed to go away after I plugged it in the left Thunderbolt ports on the MacBook. So far I was able to run Time Machine again using this back up drive.

Interface/Compatibility issues?

Monterey 12.3 on a macbook M1 13 inch and still happening. Tried all of these possible work arounds here and nothing works reliably for me. Each one creates another unique set of issues, but no actual fix for me. My least hassle work around is time machine backup into my thrunderbolt dock directly (no extra hub), enable put hard drive to sleep when possible, disable wake for network access. disable prevent mac from automatically sleeping... My backup hangs up every now and then and doesn't shut down when it should with the rest of the computer, especially sleeping for long periods like overnight. But I have less of the improper eject messages and the backup never leaves my desktop now and stays accessible. This is all Very frustrating...

Same for my 4TB Seagate HDD connected via Thunderbolt, it is ejected on my iMac with Mojave (where it was connected directly), as well as on my MacBook Air M1 with Monterey (where it is connected via a Thunderbolt to USB-C adapter, the one from Apple). I just wonder if it would be better just to buy a new case with USB. I used it as backup for my iMac but when I eventually needed a backup it just stopped half way; luckily I had a backup with CarbonCopy. After stopping, it started to be ejected; I reformatted it but it is ejected all the time anyway; really annoying. Apparently, same problem with an Legato Thunderbolt SSD on Monterey)

2021 M1 Mac Mini

2TB SSD connected using dock through USB/Thunderbolt port. SSD uses USB3 for data link.

Constant Disk Eject warnings. So many that its way faster to restart the Mac than deal with closing all the warnings. Spent a few hours with apple support on the weekend trying all the usual things: *Ran First Aid (from Disk Utility.app) *Booted into safe mode, Ran First Aid again *Reformatted drive from APFS to ExFat *Formatted drive back to APFS *Reset SMC *Changed USB ports

Nothing stopped the constant DISK NOT EJECTED PROPERLY warnings. They appear after a few minutes then keep appearing every 5 minutes or so. I had the finder open and watched the drive from the side bar, when the eject warning appears the drive does actually disappear from the finder for a second then reappears as a mounted drive.

Note that the dock also has a SD card reader, this has zero issues, works as expected. SSD however, unusable.

Can someone get onto a solution, please? I have no idea how to fix this. Have 4 new warnings just in the time it has taken me to type this post.

Issue still happening on Monterey 12.1 at 30/03/2022. The disks are still usable for me but when I login to my account after sleep mode there are many pop up messages appear related to "Disk Not Ejected Properly".

Having exactly the same issue. When will we get a fix, Apple?

Same here. M1 iMac, two external HDDs, direct connect via USB-C into the Mac.

More frequently after update to 12.3.1.

I've been using Macs for 30 years, but it was never like nowadays. Sad.