Can't eject a volume

Hi,
I'm occasionally unable to eject a volume such as a USB stick or a mounted disk image. I've checked the obvious things, there are no files in the trash and no aplications running - other than the finder! If I relaunch the finder, I can then eject the volumes, but that isn't very nice, and this seems like a bug to me. Anyone else experienced this?

Macdimitri wrote:
Hi,
I'm occasionally unable to eject a volume such as a USB stick or a mounted disk image. I've checked the obvious things, there are no files in the trash and no aplications running - other than the finder! If I relaunch the finder, I can then eject the volumes, but that isn't very nice, and this seems like a bug to me. Anyone else experienced this?
Macdimitri: if you run activity Monitor.. and look for likely candidates.. doubleclicking on them will open a windowed text box showing all the files, devs and resources being used by a process... - copy-> paste to textedit window to reformat & search - looking for Volumes/ etc...
Looks a bit like this extract:
dev/null
/dev/console
/dev/console
apple.shm.notification_center
*count=0, state=0x2*
/tmp/com.apple.csseed.82
r
/Users/g4/Desktop
/Users/g4/.Trash
/Volumes/DriveGenius/.Trashes/502
/Volumes/116GB_1/.Trashes/502
/Volumes/116GB_2/.Trashes/502
/Volumes/DG1/.Trashes/502
{Note that it has 'Trashes' , directories open on demountable (or, as with 'DriveGenius' readonly') drives that haven;t been referenced in quite a while...}
- if then, with Finder/The App hilighted, you click 'disk usage' at bottom of ACt Mon window, a dropdown box appears and you can select each 'used/open Volume (it shows as a piechart...).
However, in this case, I believe that it's a Finder bug and I relaunch Finder [but it would be nice if the msg told you WHAT the thing was in use by...] - I know sometimes, it's just been because it was in some Apps 'recent...' menu.
best,
Wayne T
PS: I have also sometimes successfully selected 'shutdown/restart' and, after all the activity stops and Finder asks 'are you sure? I can eithersay 'no' - and the problem goes away .. or I simply disconnect and reconnect the drive, get the 'mustn't do! - data may have been lost msg' and can THEN reject the thing :and kill the restart! ) I DO know that single user fsck and Disk util have later failed to find a problem anytime I do this...
but: *it WOULD be nice if the msg said just what it was sposed to be 'in use by...* - maybe a process failed earlier and didn't reset some semaphore...
Message was re-speiled by: Wayne T

Similar Messages

Can't eject network volume after extensive browsing

Hi!
I have a problem that seem to be related to Mac OS X itself.
After browsing an AFP network volume for an extended time theres a quite big chance that the volume won't eject properly.
What happens is that the volume icon vanishes from the desktop but it stays in the side bar of a Finder window.
Even if one waits for hours it still won't go away and upon clicking on the volume in the sidebar a dialog comes up saying it can't be found.
I've tried doing "sudo -f umount /Volumes/volumename" but it doesn't do anything.
If one tries to do a restart the system gets stuck because it can't properly unmount the volume.
If one force a relaunch of the Finder via the "Force Quit..." menu option in the Apple menu, what happens is that the AFP Client process stalls. It shows up red in Activity Monitor.
I can reproduce this behavior on several different computers and on G5's browsing the volume sometimes leads to a Kernel Panic involving "vnode_put".
All machines are running Mac OS X 10.4.8.
The AFP volume I'm browsing when this happens consists of several folders that contains several .eps images. The file-structure looks like in this screen shot: http://home.mac.se/star-affinity/filestructure.png
Anyone else recognize this?
G4 Quicksilver 867 MHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

The volumes are mounted via the Finder.
Ok, I'll try remove all the "dot" files I can find, but I can guarantee you it has got nothing to do with the volume not unmounting properly. :P
No, but seriously, I have made a clean install of the system on both machines and upgraded it to 10.4.8. I then duplicate 4 different .eps files that I copy from a third machine and I duplicate them and make a file structure somewhat like in the screen shot I link to above.
I then start file sharing on the machine with all the files and use the other to browse this machine. I browse from within the open/save dial of TextEdit.
I must say I wonder how any hidden files would cause a problem in this case.
I also wouldn't say that there are many issues with Tiger. It is this thing with network browsing and perhaps some kind of video driver issue that I've posted about here: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=3302238#3302238
Otherwise I think it runs great!
Can't understand why you're still at 10.3.9.
Anyway, thanks for trying to help!

Mac OSX 10.8.3, Firefox 20.0 - Can't eject volume "because Firefox is using it". Why is firefox using my external media?

Mac OSX 10.8.3, Firefox 20.0 - Can't eject volume "because Firefox is using it". Why is firefox using my external media?

Did you use Firefox to download something to that external media?
If so, try clearing the Downloads Manager.

Trying to Install OS X & Can't Eject CD / DVS

I erased my hard drive and am now trying to install an operating system. I'm getting the following error....."You cannot install Mac OSX on this volume. An earlier version of Mac OSX is not installed".
Now I can't eject the CD / DVD in order to install from an earlier version. The eject icon is grayed out in the Disk Utility. Any idea on how I can eject it?

Five ways to eject a stuck CD or DVD from the optical drive
Ejecting the stuck disc can usually be done in one of the following ways:
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the left mouse button until the disc ejects.
2. Press the Eject button on your keyboard.
3. Click on the Eject button in the menubar.
4. Press COMMAND-E.
5. If none of the above work try this:
Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following:
/usr/bin/drutil eject.
If this fails then try this:
Boot the computer into single-user mode. At the prompt enter the same command as used above. To restart the computer enter "reboot" at the prompt without quotes.

Can't eject FW drives - says app is open, yet none are open

This is mildly disturbing: After only 6 months of use, I just got a "Can't eject drives" and something about data being "used" or an app being open, yet *no* applications are open - everything was quit / closed before I chose to eject the drives. Just like I've done for 10 years on Macs.
The warning prompt showed an option to "force eject" which I did not do, nor did I chose "try again". I stopped trying to eject. Then, even *more* disturbing, I clicked on one of the drives and it showed "0 items" on the drive.
I restarted and now the drives appear normal.
Just prior to this happening, I had an additional self-powered Glyph drive at the end of the daisy-chain. Disturbingly #3: while this drive was connected, I received a warning prompt that said "drive wasn't ejected properly" and it disappeared from my desktop. I had done nothing to cause this, it simply happenend. I'm guessing this issue is due to the self-powered factor - I probably should have had this closer in-line to the Mac FW800 bus.
Would this daisy-chain scenario cause the non-eject problem?
Here is my setup:
FW800 out to older Glyph drive via FW400 connection, then daisy-chained to two *brand new* Glyph drives via FW800 connections. ALL drives were formatted properly when I purchased them.
OS 10.8.5
I remember this happening on 10.7, 10.6, 10.5 etc... Hasn't Apple figured this out?
Is there a Disk Utility I should run to make sure all my drives are ok?

I don't think that's the case because the drive successfully ejects upon closure of the QT player. I'm not sure if it is the way they wrote file handling in general in Mountain Lion, or if it is a QT Player 7 issue, but it is definately annoying.
It seems that the Volume becomes locked when a file is opened. When that file is closed, the Volume remains locked until the application that opened the file is closed. This seems to work different than it used to.

I'm trying to install bootcamp and XP, but when keyboard does't work. How can I eject the disc?

How can I eject the disc and start over and get into the OSX system?

XP isn't supported in BootCamp, you'll have to use the free VirualBox or one of the other commercial virtual machine softwares to run it in a window on OS X. The performance isn't going to be good enough for 3D games or heavy CPU ones, but good enought for most general use software.
Apple doesn't supply the hybrid MBR and hardware drivers required to run XP in BootCamp any longer. If you were on Snow Leopard 10.6 it's still possible, but not Lion or Mountain Lion.
This is what you do to resolve your problem.
1: Hold the power button down to force a hardware shutdown (emergency use only use the Apple Menu > shutdown all other times)
2: Press and hold the option/alt key on the keyboard.
3: Boot the computer and enter Startup Manager
4: Keep pressing the eject key on the keyboard, the disk will eject.
5: Select OS X to boot from by clicking on the volume and the little arrow that appears.
6: Set Startup Disk in System Preferences to OS X.
7: Head to BootCamp Utility and use it to remove the BootCamp partition.
8: If you used Disk Utility, then use that to remove the second partition and absorb the remaining space back into the OS X partition.
9: Install VirtualBox, if on 10.8 you migh have to control/right click and "Open" to bypass Gatekeeper controls for the installer and/or program at least once.
10: Read the instructions how to setup and use VirtualBox.

Just purchased USB SuperDrive to connect MacBook air can't eject start up disc

just purchased USB SuperDrive to connect MacBook air can't eject start up disc? please advise

No, of course not. The "startup disk" is the disk with your boot volume (operating system) on it. Once you boot (startup) from it it is locked as your computer will not "run" without a valid "startup disk".
It would be similar to complaining that "I can't remove the engine from a running vehicle".

Can't eject DVD - "device is busy"

I'm attempting to install the Orange Box in Wine. It finished with disc 1 and is asking for disc 2. The button on the drive won't eject it so I went to dolphin to eject it but it cannot be unmounted. I tried "eject /dev/cdrom" from the command line and it gives the following error:
/sbin/umount.hal: Unmounting /media/Orange Box failed: org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.Busy: umount: /media/Orange Box: device is busy.
How can I force it to unmount and eject?

DWilliams wrote:
karol wrote:
DWilliams wrote:Yeah but I don't want to terminate the installer since I'll probably just have to start it all over again and hit the same problem.
Maybe you can copy the contents to your hard drive and 'mount -o loop file.iso /mnt/image'.
Actually I just read the Wine appDB entry for this and they had a solution. I mapped my cd drive to D: in Wine and then called "wine eject D:" and it released it. I'm still disappointed that even root can't eject a drive in use. I thought the whole philosophy of using root was "do what I type regardless of the consequences". I mean, I can make a typo and erase the contents of my hard drive but not unmount a DVD?
I think that even the root can't lift himself by the bootstraps but he can leap out of a tall building - if he wants to.
Root can kill any process and then eject that damn disk but some things are (what I call) logically impossible.

Can't eject disk after rsync

I have an rsync script that runs from a Firewire backup disk. When it is finished running it prints:
<pre class="jive-pre">logout
Process completed]
</pre>
If I try to eject the disk I get error message: "The disk is in use and cannot be ejected. Try quitting applications and try again".
Even if I close the Terminal window I still cannot eject the disk. I am forced to quit Terminal to eject the disk.
Is there a shell command to really quit the process so I can eject the disk?

You might check to see if rsync is still running in the background. Type ps -agx | grep rsync and then kill -9 PID of rsync. Or just type:
kill -9 `ps -agx | grep rsync | head -1 | awk '{print$1}'`
to kill it. Now see if you can eject the disk.
Or you can force the external drive to eject with hdiutil eject -force /Volumes/externaldrive where "externaldrive" is the name of your mounted disk.

Can't eject HDD using time machine

Greetings folks,
I have 2 TB Lacie external HDD that I use for Time machine backups. When I try to eject it, finder says it is still in use, although Time machine is switched off. Also, I added the volume to be excluded from Spotlight, but the message "spotlight will keep on searching backup files" apears when I add the volume to the privacy tab. Any suggestions?

Hello Nexus6generation,
Thank you for the details of the issue you are experiencing with your external hard drive. I recommend these steps when you are unable to eject the disk:
If you can’t eject an external disk
Choose Apple menu > Log Out, and then log in again. Try to eject the disk again.
If you still can’t eject the disk, choose Apple menu > Shut Down. Disconnect the disk from your computer, and then start up your computer again.
OS X Mountain Lion: If you can’t eject a disk
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10685
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Sheila M.

I can not eject my I disk , please help

I have tried What to do if you can't eject iDisk the following suggestion which is the only one i could find here......and it doesn't work the system won't let me put the idisk with my username in the trash. Does anyone know what I should do now? thanks Elizabeth
Sometimes your iDisk may not disconnect properly. The "ghost" can stay even after you restart your computer. If this is happening, there are several ways the ghost may manifest itself, but the most common is that you try to connect to your iDisk and simply can't, or you connect to your iDisk but the username has "-1" after it.
Follow the steps below to exorcise the iDisk ghost.
(Whenever the instructions use the word "username", it refers to your .Mac username - the part before the "@mac.com" in your email address.)
Restart your computer. Don't try to access your iDisk yet.
Choose Go to Folder from the Go menu.
Type /Volumes/ into the window that appears and click Go.
A new window appears.
If an icon appears in the Volumes folder that is named "username", "username-1", and so forth, delete it by dragging it to the Trash, then choose Empty Trash from the Finder menu.

Hi Elizabeth and welcome to Apple Discussions.
I do not know what you have tried already. But it sounds as if your iDisk is still in use. I would first go to the Apple menu and go to force quit and make the finder relaunch. Then try to eject the disk.
If that does not work go to system pref. then click on the .mac icon and see if it is trying to sync and if so click to stop if from syncing and then try to eject the iDisk.
Let me know what happened.

Can't create fresh volume on internal drive for reinstall

Daughter's MacBook Pro (Snow Leopard) was initially believed to be damaged by corrupt Library files, particularly iTunes. A clean install would run fine until iTunes was introduced, leading to instability and finally no boot. But not the issue now (I have a good system and data backup, without iTunes, on an external drive.)
The current problem started when, as part of the reinstall, I did an erase of the hard drive, not the volume.
Now, from the Install DVD, can't create a volume on or format the internal drive.
Using Linux Live CDs, I have been able to format a volume on the drive as FAT32. Verify suggests Repair on this, Repair failed.
In detail:
drive selected -- verify disk -- needs to be rpeaired
drive selected -- repair disk -- can't repair this disk
drive selected -- erase disk -- format as mac os ext journ, zero out -- erase failed, posix input/output error
now startup with resetting PRM, able to create Mac HD volume, appears like success, but not there on reboot.
Round and round endlessly.
Any ideas on how to get this drive with a working, formatted volume, ready for a fresh install?

I''m going to run through this again.
Linc Davis, I did reset the PRAM/NVRAM but may not have waited for three chimes.
When I erase an existing partition, am I not creating a new GUID partition table? If not, how do I do that?
Also, I am concerned about -- A Mac OS X installation can be recovered on 'Mac HD'.
I'll hope to not see that.
Lets go.
Command Option P R held down, four chimes
Oops, Linux disk still in.
How do I get this disk out without support for the eject key? Hold down the trackpad while powering up. That's good to know.
Another PRAM/NVRAM reset. (I know.)
Removing the three linux partiions. os3, os2, error on os1. Erased the second time of asking.
Create new OS X partition, Mac HD.
Erase that volume with writing zeros.
This will take a while.

I can't change the volume of the background music in my project even if I put it to 0%

I can't change the volume, I've tried to put it down with Itunes, stop and start again my computer but nothing work... PLEAAAAAASE HELP...

Solved it, there was a problem of the same music put it twice!

Can't eject disc & it doesn't even show up on system!

I installed Parallels 5.0 from the installation disc, which seems to be installed just fine, but now I can't eject the disc and it doesn't even show up under devices. I tried all these things below except the last one (because I couldnt get my mac to start like it describes). What now? I just bought this Macbook Pro new a week ago - soooo annoying!
Ejecting a CD or DVD when all else fails
If you've tried all the usual methods of ejecting a CD or DVD from your computer's optical drive, there are some other methods you can try.
First, quit all applications that are using files on the disc. Then try one of these alternate methods:
Open Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder), select the disc, and choose File > Eject.
Choose Apple menu > Restart and hold down the mouse or trackpad button until the disc ejects.
If your drive has an emergency eject hole, put the computer to sleep and insert a large, straightened paper clip in the small emergency eject hole of the drive (the location varies, depending on the drive). Push firmly until the disc ejects.
If all other methods fail, you can try to eject the disk using the firmware. (This may not work on all computers. For example, it does not work on Intel-based computers.) The steps below describe how to start up and briefly use the computer with only the firmware loaded, not the standard Mac OS X interface.
To eject a disc using firmware:
Restart the computer.
When you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Command-Option-O-F keys. (The Command key has an Apple on it.)
Release the keys when you see a white welcome screen.
At the prompt, type:
eject cd
Press Return, then wait a few seconds. The disc drive should eject the disc, and "ok" appears on the screen when the action is complete.
Type:
mac-boot
Press Return.
Your computer starts up normally and you see the familiar Mac OS X desktop.

Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following:
/usr/bin/drutil eject.
If this fails then try this:
Boot the computer into single-user mode. At the prompt enter the same command as used above. To restart the computer enter "reboot" at the prompt without quotes.
I suggest that to start with you shutdown the computer. If you are unable to remove the DVD then it's possible there's a problem with your optical drive. Take the computer in for service.

Can I have multiple volume levels in one track?

I have a track composed of audio from a cassette recorder of a now deceased relative's voice.
Since the cassette was turned on and off during recording, the recordings are at different volumes.
I have been able to import the cassette into a GarageBand project, and delete dead space, but now I find that the volume is not consistent.
Any way to remedy that? I am wondering if I need to chop it up and make more than one track, and adjust the volume on each track? Will this work as long as the tracks don't overlap?
And then do I send the finished product to iTunes in order to be able to use it in an iMovie?
Or can I drag it right from GarageBand to iMovie?
Many thanks, I'm a very new GarageBand user.

JGolomb wrote:
Can I have multiple volume levels in one track?.
search GB's help for "curve"
And then do I send the finished product to iTunes in order to be able to use it in an iMovie?
"Share" it to disc
can I drag it right from GarageBand to iMovie?
no

Can't eject a volume

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for