Backup hard drive gets disconnected by something in Yosemite, how can I fix this?

[iMore Question]

Backup hard drive gets disconnected by something in Yosemite

Before Yosemite, my backup hard drive would go to sleep whenever and however it was put there with no problems about wakening with the iMac. However, since installing Yosemite, the backup wakes up sometimes, but many times it does not, and a message appears in place of or over the backup icon that says it was not properly ejected. Sometimes I can just close the message and the backup drive icon will remain so it is usable. Sometimes the icon disappears with the message window. When it does disappear, or if it had not appeared with the message, the icon and thus ability to reactivate the backup drive is lost. To get the backup connected again I can unplug and replug either the power or data cable. I can also do so by selecting either Restart or Shut Down and then restarting. Is there a fix in the OS in the works or already there in revisions? The next major version?El Capitan?from what I've read, has the problem or worse.

 

[RogMoore]

Re: Backup hard drive gets disconnected by something in Yosemite

What is Yosemite? Could you tell me in short?

 

[Rob Phillips]

Re: Backup hard drive gets disconnected by something in Yosemite

Welcome to iMore! Go to your backup drive's support site and check for any firmware or driver updates. If this is an issue with particular backup drives you might find more abundant support resources there as well.

 

[Ledsteplin]

Re: Backup hard drive gets disconnected by something in Yosemite

What is Yosemite? Could you tell me in short?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X_Yosemite

 

[robertk328]

Re: Backup hard drive gets disconnected by something in Yosemite

Welcome to iMore!

I had some issues with my backup drive as well with Time Machine and finally figured out how to fix it. Not sure if this is what will help you but it's worth sharing.

I was able to fix it temporarily by purchasing Alsoft Disk Warrior but the problem eventually came back. Did some more reading and most everything pointed to having to format the drive and start over again. I didn't want to do that as I had recently put in a new hard drive on the machine and I had two drives worth of sensitive backups.

Evidently what happens is sometimes during a power outage or if the computer isn't shut down or disk ejected properly, the files get corrupt, and Time Machine is sensitive to that. I had the drive formatted as OSX Extended (don't use case-sensitive) but found the best is to make sure it is OSX Extended Journaled. Luckily this is something you can enable without reformatting the entire drive.

You can read more about file system journaling in OSX here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204435

I would suggest checking to make sure you have it enabled, and if not, go ahead and follow the instructions on how to do it. If that doesn't work, I would give Disk Warrior a try. Might even be worth it to get Disk Warrior anyway but that's up to you

 

[RogMoore]

Re: Backup hard drive gets disconnected by something in Yosemite

Thanks for the info, it helped me understood that you were talking about mac.