WD Elements ejects under heavy load

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

Hi,

I have a WD Elements 500GB which runs under OS X Maverick 10.9.1. The disk ejects randomly which causes aborted write operations and making it quite useless as a backup disk. I ran the disk in the following configurations and always got the eject behaviour. Only the time is hard to predict, sometimes after a minute, sometimes after an hour. My guess is that it depends on the load.

Tested configurations:

ExFat on a Mac mini (2011)

HFS on a Mac mini (2011)

ExFat on a MacBook late 2008 unibody

HFS on a MacBook late 2008 unibody

Edit:

Even tested as an external disk on a Time Capsule. The WD disk also suddenly ejects.

Different cables (the one provided with the disk, another USB3 cable and a USB2 cable) were also tested in all configurations.

Any suggestions?

2

Hello, as a troubleshooting step, try connecting the USB cable directly to your Mac, avoid using USB extension cables or USB hubs. You can also try running a test using Disk Utility. Check the link below for the steps. 

How to test a drive for defects or problems on a Mac 

3

Hi,

thanks for your reply. In all tests the drives have always been connected directly. I also ran checkdisk several times without any reported errors.