Shameless self promotion - if you plug your notebook computer into external disks often and don’t enjoy finding them to eject every time you undock, DriveLight[0] gives you a global shortcut to eject (or just unmount) all your disks at once. You get a menu bar extra to show disk activity, too!

0 - https://ttkb.co/soft/drivelight/

I’m surprised apple hasn’t solved this in some way. Seems like the apple is at would be to make removing the drive just work.

Replace the word "ejected" with "removed" as appropriate and the error becomes apparent.

No one "ejects" an external hard disc, you remove or disconnect it. You do eject a CD or a DVD.

Eject is a forceful removal ... if my memory is not totally shagged - iacto (Latin - I throw) or similar.

To be fair I have seen a few ejections or the aftermath of discs (hard/floppy/CD/DVD) and not considered them ... a disconnect event 8)

I suggest Apple go back to school and dispense with the lazy error reporting.