Why does my external hd keep ejecting itself?

Asked by Deepness (1145

) 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

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.

martijn86 (401

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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.

Dog (25152

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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.

styfle (362

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