General Question

Deepness's avatar

Why does my external hd keep ejecting itself?

Asked by Deepness (1145points) July 30th, 2009

I have a 15inch MacBook Pro and a 320gb Western Digital My Book external hd connected via usb cable. Every now and then, it ejects itself and my MBP can’t find it until I unplug the external hd’s power cable and plug it in again after a few seconds. It’s annoying as hell. I’ve read reviews on Amazon and many users seem to be complaining of this. Can someone who actually owns a 2tb external hd recommend one to me that they are not having problems with in a similar setup?

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4 Answers

martijn86's avatar

I have no experience with the disc but external drives can have an auto-off setting and the os can set harddrives to stand-by after a certain delay too.

Dog's avatar

Mine are doing the same. ( backup drive iMac)
this started about three months ago and is vexing since automatic backup and time machine are in constant error mode.

Waching this thread to see if a guru responds.

styfle's avatar

To save money, many new external drives do not have a power switch. This means it will turn on when plugged in via USB, and power down after 10 min of inactivity to save power. Obviously a powered off drive is unmounted and appears ejected in OSX. I hope that helps.

AskBlam's avatar

If it only happens to this EHD then your best bet would be to take out the 2.5” HD inside and stick it in a 2.5” SATA case. They’re around $10—$20 US

Cheers
Blam

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