How come my M1 MacBook ejects my external hard drives when it goes to sleep?

[rachelcenter]

how come my m1 macbook ejects my external hard drives when it goes to sleep? A pop up in the corner of the computer says "disk not ejected properly" (BUT I DIDNT EJECT IT!) I'm fine with the computer going to sleep but I'm not fine with it ejecting my external hard drive because then all my footage goes offline in premiere when I wake the computer up. sounds like 300 people have this problem too External Drives STILL ejecting during sle… - Apple Community. just updated my OS to ventura 13.3.1 and after the OS update the problem persisted. Problem persisted before the OS update too. Problem persists on multiple external hard drives so i dont think its a problem with the cable.

 

[Brian33]

how come my m1 macbook ejects my external hard drives when it goes to sleep?

I wish I knew. I've looked at plenty of log messages but have been unable to track down my issue (on Monterey). My log messages seem to indicate that the external drive is being (automatically? forcefully?) ejected, and then immediately re-mounted. It has sometimes been remounted with a different device ID that it had before (e.g., a particular volume that had been mounted at /dev/disk4 is remounted at /dev/disk2.)

It could be you've got a bad cable, port, or enclosure. Or it could be a bug in macOS. I think the latter. I'm lucky; for me it only happens every month or so. (However, that makes it tough to track down!) By the way, for me, setting the Mac to never sleep did not prevent the "disk not ejected properly" message from appearing, so I don't think it is solely related to sleep.

We've got plenty of company:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ly-messages-after-waking-up-computer.2321141/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/disk-not-ejected-properly.2381272/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/notification-to-eject-ssd-before-disconnecting.2388298/

 

[njvm]

Whilst not ideal, I found turning off 'Put hard disks to sleep when possible' under Energy Saver in System Settings stopped the disk getting ejected.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP asks:
"how come my m1 macbook ejects my external hard drives when it goes to sleep?"

Mac users have been complaining about this since USB was first introduced on Macs back around the time of the very first iMac.

A Fishrrman fearless prediction™:
This isn't going to change.

So...
The best solution is to... well... "deal with it".
That's not intended to be snarky.
Rather, find things that work for you.

Try njvm's suggestion first. It -might- work. Maybe not all the time, but much of the time.

Another suggestion:
If you're using the external drive for only certain things -- in your case, Premiere projects -- connect the drive when you work using Premiere, and then manually eject and disconnect it when you're finished.

Yes, that's an extra step.
But it works.

Another option for managing external drives.
A free app that may work for you named "Semulov":

GitHub - kainjow/Semulov: Access mounted and unmounted volumes from the menubar

Access mounted and unmounted volumes from the menubar - kainjow/Semulov

github.com

(to download, look on the right for "releases", then click "latest" button)
Semulov lets you manually dismount/remount drives.
I would dismount the external drive when you're done with Premier, then see if it will remount after you wake the Mac.

The idea here is that now YOU control the dismounting/re-mounting of the drive, instead of having it "kicked off" when sleeping.
Again, something to try.

 

[rachelcenter]

OP asks:
"how come my m1 macbook ejects my external hard drives when it goes to sleep?"

Mac users have been complaining about this since USB was first introduced on Macs back around the time of the very first iMac.

A Fishrrman fearless prediction™:
This isn't going to change.

So...
The best solution is to... well... "deal with it".
That's not intended to be snarky.
Rather, find things that work for you.

Try njvm's suggestion first. It -might- work. Maybe not all the time, but much of the time.

Another suggestion:
If you're using the external drive for only certain things -- in your case, Premiere projects -- connect the drive when you work using Premiere, and then manually eject and disconnect it when you're finished.

Yes, that's an extra step.
But it works.

Another option for managing external drives.
A free app that may work for you named "Semulov":

GitHub - kainjow/Semulov: Access mounted and unmounted volumes from the menubar

Access mounted and unmounted volumes from the menubar - kainjow/Semulov

github.com

(to download, look on the right for "releases", then click "latest" button)
Semulov lets you manually dismount/remount drives.
I would dismount the external drive when you're done with Premier, then see if it will remount after you wake the Mac.

The idea here is that now YOU control the dismounting/re-mounting of the drive, instead of having it "kicked off" when sleeping.
Again, something to try.

I disagree, i've used apple computers for decades and cant remember this being an issue on any mac i've owned in the past 10 years maybe even 15.

 

[zikon55]

I've also used Mac for 15 years and never had this error when going to sleep. Any thoughts or ideas? I'm running mac studio M1 Max.

 

[Paulejonesy]

I get this all the time. M1 Max MacBook Pro on the latest OS 13. But only with SSD's Spinning drives seem to stay mounted whatever. Will try the 'Hard disks to sleep' toggle and see if that helps.

 

[xraydoc]

I get this all the time. M1 Max MacBook Pro on the latest OS 13. But only with SSD's Spinning drives seem to stay mounted whatever. Will try the 'Hard disks to sleep' toggle and see if that helps.

Running them through a hub that might be going to sleep along with the Mac? Just a thought.

I actually don't have similar issues, but then again I never put my Mac to sleep (MacBook Pro in clamshell mode) unless it's not docked at my desk. But then of course there's no external drives connected to it. I do, however, have a flush-mount SD card which survives the MBP being put to sleep and woken up. No disconnection issues with it. And, I believe, internally the SD card slot is connected to the USB bus... I think. Right?

 

[NMLzrd09]

Someone wrote a nifty little program to foreverstop the “Disk Not Ejected Properly” messages and all the headaches. It automatically unmounts the external drive (properly) before sleep and remounts it automatically upon wake. You can find it at ejectify.app.

It works on my M3 MacBook Pro. Saved me from the issues I was having with my SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD disconnecting and then refusing to remount, which according to other forums has even resulted in data loss.

 

[mk313]

Someone wrote a nifty little program to foreverstop the “Disk Not Ejected Properly” messages and all the headaches. It automatically unmounts the external drive (properly) before sleep and remounts it automatically upon wake. You can find it at ejectify.app.

It works on my M3 MacBook Pro. Saved me from the issues I was having with my SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD disconnecting and then refusing to remount, which according to other forums has even resulted in data loss.

Do you happen to use this program on a disk that is used for a Time Machine backup? I was about to buy the app, but one of the reviews on the page said that it won't work with Time Machine Backups, which was my planned use.

 

[mk313]

FWIW, there is another app similar to ejectify called Jettison that supposedly also works on encrypted disks. I have no idea if it works, but I installed it today & so far, so good. But for me the problem is intermittent, so not sure if it's fixed, or just hasn't happened yet.