External hard drive constantly being ejected

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I have 3 external hard drives plugged in via usb2 to my machine. I have recently added a couple of PCI cards to give me more USB ports and I was thinking maybe it was these that were playing up and suddenly ejecting the drives - which then gave me the error warning message about damaging data if things are not removed correctly....
anyway thinking it was the new pci cards playing up I move 2 of the external drives to the main usb ports but i am still getting this problem.
The Hard drives I am using are WD. Anyone else had this problem with external hard drives becoming unconnected suddenly? any advice appreciated....
thanks
 

chscag

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Moved to appropriate forum.

Not much to go on here since you didn't mention anything at all about your machine or which version of OS X you're running.

I can think of two reasons the drives are dismounting. Not enough power coming thru the USB ports (I know you stated you tried adding ports using PCI cards) or the USB system is not functioning.

I'm assuming you have a Mac Pro or other tower Mac.... Have you tried using firewire? Does the same happen with other USB hardware such as a flash drive or optical drive?
 
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Confusing statement

Moved to appropriate forum.

This still confuses me on this forum. When a moderator moves something to another forum I am lost as to where to go look for it. :Confused:
 
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deleted sorry for the repetition.
 

chscag

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Please do not start a new thread or crosspost on the same subject. Alway post back to the original thread. Starting a new thread for the same thing causes confusion and clutters the forum with unnecessary replies
 
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just added my spec details so dunno if that helps

"I can think of two reasons the drives are dismounting. Not enough power coming thru the USB ports (I know you stated you tried adding ports using PCI cards) or the USB system is not functioning.
Have you tried using firewire? Does the same happen with other USB hardware such as a flash drive or optical drive?"


I haven't tried using firewire as the PCI cards just give 4 usb ports each. I have tried plugging in to the USB at the front of the machine and it works fine.
I have the mouse and keyboard both plugged into these PCI usb ports and have never had a problem with them.
As the external hard drives both have their own power why would they need to draw power from the USB ports? or is there still a certain amount of power needed just to run the data through the cables? So do you think maybe i should get rid of one of these PCI cards so that less power is taken?
 
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Hi sorry to come back to an old post that no one seems to have an answer for but I am still getting the same issue with my HD being ejected.
I have now changed the PCI card to a different one made by a different manufacturer but still any HD plugged into it gets ejected at some point in the day. It is not instant and can be several hours after the machine was first switched on.
Any ideas anyone?
thanks
 

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