How to Stop Repeated 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' Notification on Mac?

Usually, the notification 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' appears in the upper-right corner of your Mac screen only if you directly unplug the removable external drives without safely ejecting them.

The weird thing is, you don't unplug your external hard drive from your Mac but the external hard drive keeps disconnecting on Mac with this message that keeps popping up after upgrading to macOS Monterey or Big Sur. Or, it shows up randomly after your Mac restarts or wakes from sleep.

So, how can you stop the endless pop-ups? This post will tell you how to dismiss the 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' notification that keeps popping up on your Mac. You can follow it to get the reasons and solutions for this issue.

Why does your Mac keep saying 'Disk Not Ejected Properly'?

The 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' notification shows up on your Mac in an improper way, which indicates that there are errors in your operating system, on the connected external removable drives, or in the connections between your external drives and the Mac.

More specifically, the reasons why the message 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' won't go away from your Mac are as below:

How to get rid of the 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' notification on Mac?

The repeated 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' notification on your M1 Mac, MacBook, or so can be caused by software and hardware issues. It is hard to identify the exact culprit immediately.

Therefore, you are supposed to try all the possible workarounds one by one to troubleshoot the 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' message that keeps popping up on Mac.

How to dismiss multiple of the 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' notifications in macOS Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina:

Check the connections

Perhaps, the external hard drive cable or the port on your Mac is slightly damaged, causing your Mac to enter into the circle of connecting and disconnecting the external hard drive.

The failing cable makes the operating system think that you unceasingly unplug and plug the external hard drive, so the 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' alert keeps displaying. To verify whether the cable is damaged, you can change a cable.

If the message continues to appear on your Mac, go to check the condition of the USB or Thunderbolt port on your Mac. You can connect the external hard drive or USB flash drive to another port on your Mac model.

If the warning 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' continues showing up randomly, it means that the troublemakers aren't the cable and Mac port. You can try the next way.

Reset the Energy Saver preferences on your Mac

Some users report that, after upgrading to macOS Monterey, they receive tons of the 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' notifications when they wake up the Mac from sleep mode or restart the computer.

It seems that the operating system has some glitches in detecting the connected external drives after you return to the machine. In that case, you can try to change the Energy Saver settings on your Mac to fix this issue.

Here's how:

After resetting the Energy Saver preferences, you can put your Mac in sleep mode and then wake it up or simply restart your Mac and keep an eye on if the 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' notification appears or not.

Reset SMC on Mac

SMC (System Management Controller) takes control of the sleep and wake, hibernation, and other low-level settings on Mac. As the notification also pops up after waking up from sleep, resetting SMC may help resolve the disorderly popping-up alert.

To reset SMC on your Mac:

Reset NVRAM on Mac

NVRAM (non-volatile random-access memory) is a small amount of memory on Mac that stores the system-related settings. There's a possibility that the system errors make the message 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' shows up frequently. So, you can reset NVRAM to troubleshoot it.

Here's how to reset NVRAM on a Mac: 

It is unnecessary for you to reset NVRAM on an M1 Mac as M1 Mac can do auto-reset if needed during the Mac startup.

Run First Aid to check your external hard drive

Don't ignore that the errors on the external hard drive can also lead to the repeated popping up of the hint 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' on Mac. The errors on the hard drive interfere with the operating system recognizing the drive correctly, causing the external hard drive to keep ejecting itself on Mac.

You can run First Aid to check and fix the tiny errors on the external hard drive.

Reformat the external hard drive

If First Aid helps nothing, and this notification keeps showing up and your Mac doesn't recognize the external hard drive even if it shows up on the Desktop or Disk Utility, it indicates that the drive may have more serious problems.

In that case, you can try to reformat the external hard drive on your Mac. But this will make data lose, you'd better think twice before taking action. 

Or, you can try to use professional data recovery software like iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to get off the files from the external hard drive first. This data recovery tool helps recover files from inaccessible, corrupted, or unmounted external hard drives within a few clicks. After restoring your data, you can get down to erase the hard drive.

Update macOS

If the tons of 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' pop-ups are not caused by connection issues and the external hard drive itself, you should consider if the system errors are the culprits.

And some users have communicated in the forums that the notification 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' keeps appearing after upgrading to macOS Monterey or Big Sur. Therefore, you can check if there are any minor updates available and update your Mac. Simply go to Apple icon > System Preferences > Software Update.

If you've already updated your Mac to the latest macOS and the issue still exists, you can contact the Apple support team and describe your problem to get quick help.

Tips to avoid 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' appearing on Mac

Safely ejecting the removable hard drives can prevent the unexpected 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' notification from popping up on Mac. So, when you prepare to unplug the external hard drives and USB flash drives, do the following steps in advance:

Wait for the data transferring task to finish before ejecting the external drive. If you are copying files from your Mac to the external drive or conversely, wait until the process is completely finished before ejecting it.

Safely eject the external drive rather than unplug it directly. On the Desktop or in the Finder side-bard, right-click the external drive and select Eject "Drive Name" to safely eject it on Mac.

FAQ about 'Disk Not Ejected Properly' Mac keeps popping up