Cannot eject FireWire drives

Hi,
Whenever I mount a firewire drive, I cannot eject it again - I always get a -47 error, saying the drive is busy. I have TimeMachine turned OFF, so that shouldn't be causing the problem. Also, I never had any problems with this under Tiger.
Any ideas? I have tried all possible ways of unmounting the drive, but nothing works (except pulling the plug obviously.....)

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Can't Eject Firewire drives

I've been using a collection of 500GB firewire G-Drives for pro-audio & time machine backups.
Up until now, they work great with my old 2006 MBP (OS 10.4) , and my late 2008 MBP (OS 10.5.6)
I just got a new 2009 MBP with Leopard 10.5.6 and whenever I mount the drives, I cannot eject them.
Its a mystery. No applications are open. Spotlight is not running. Everytime I try to eject a drive I get a message saying its in use.
My only remedy is to shut down the computer, and turn them off.
Any ideas?

Means corrupted system files. You should reinstall OS X. You may try this:
How to Perform an Archive and Install
An Archive and Install will NOT erase your hard drive, but you must have sufficient free space for a second OS X installation which could be from 3-9 GBs depending upon the version of OS X and selected installation options. The free space requirement is over and above normal free space requirements which should be at least 6-10 GBs. Read all the linked references carefully before proceeding.
1. Be sure to use Disk Utility first to repair the disk before performing the Archive and Install.
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported, then quit DU and return to the installer.
2. Do not proceed with an Archive and Install if DU reports errors it cannot fix. In that case use Disk Warrior and/or TechTool Pro to repair the hard drive. If neither can repair the drive, then you will have to erase the drive and reinstall from scratch.
3. Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When you reach the screen to select a destination drive click once on the destination drive then click on the Option button. Select the Archive and Install option. You have an option to preserve users and network preferences. Only select this option if you are sure you have no corrupted files in your user accounts. Otherwise leave this option unchecked. Click on the OK button and continue with the OS X Installation.
4. Upon completion of the Archive and Install you will have a Previous System Folder in the root directory. You should retain the PSF until you are sure you do not need to manually transfer any items from the PSF to your newly installed system.
5. After moving any items you want to keep from the PSF you should delete it. You can back it up if you prefer, but you must delete it from the hard drive.
6. You can now download a Combo Updater directly from Apple's download site to update your new system to the desired version as well as install any security or other updates. You can also do this using Software Update.

Please Help! Cannot get firewire drive to mount!

Hi,
I am running 10.4.5 on a dual g5 2ghz. I cannot get my second firewire drive (lacie 160gb porsche) to mount. It has been working ok up until now and is only a few months old.. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
BTW does not show up in disk utilities or DiskWarrior either..
Many Thanks,
Ed.

Hi Ed,
look at the excellent Dale Weisshaar's advices here. It worked for me (unpluging the computer for 30 minutes).
Dual 2.3GHz G5 3GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.5) iBook G4 1GHz

Cannot unmount firewire drive due to compressord

I was working off a Firewire 400 drive doing work with Motion and Compressor. I am done, quit all my apps, try to eject the drive. I get a "device is busy" error and it will not eject.
There are no running applications, and force-quitting the Finder has no effect on this.
I ran "losf" in Terminal and got one open file:
compresso 1643 stevel 40r VREG 14,8 0 20785 /Volumes/PSYDUCK/Armor Animation/images/ies/LPFCPull.mov/..namedfork/rsrc
I notice that a "compressord" process in running, although Compressor has been quit.
I kill compressord with sudo in Terminal, and now I can unmount the drive.
Is this normal behavior? It's annoying and took me 1/2 hour to track down. I don't know why this file was kept open.
Any ideas?

Mmmmhmmm. Well when your computer is running through the installation preparation screens, there should be one where it will ask you where the location is you want iTunes to be loaded into. Change it to drive C. That SHOULD do it.
To be honest...I wish I had a Mac. Seems like they are much more reliable.
Windows XP

System hardlocks when ejecting firewire drives

Anyone else having this issue? I've had it since the 2.6.16 kernels, and I'm currently running -8. I have both an ipod and an external hard drive that will hang the system about 75% of the time when I "safely remove" or use the eject command and unhook them. Both are firewire. I can't find anything in the logs.

I may have solved this. Sometime during recent upgrades my system started loading the eth1394 module along with the regular 1394 modules. I've never seen this before, and have no use at all for it - more to the point, it was screwing with my existing ethernet. Reasoning there might be a connection, I've added eth1394 to my blacklist, and so far have not been able to make my box hang. I've also upgraded to 2.6.16.2 w/o issue.

Cannot Eject External Drive Using Space/Leopard

Since I installed Leopard, I find it very useful. But in order to eject the external drive, I must quit all applications (six), which forces me to open the same documents each time. Isn't there a way to eject the external drive so that I can keep my applications open in Spaces?

This issue got worse for me. I read a bunch of posts about troubles with Time Machine and Spaces, so I turned Spaces off on my computer and restarted it.
Time Machine immediately started working and did a small backup successfully. I tried to eject the disk to see if it would work and it did!
The problem now is that the computer won't recognize my USB drive after I ejected it. I plug it in and the drive will not show up in the Finder and the drive just keeps rhythmically clicking away. I've tried restarting my computer without luck. Also, the USB drive works normally on a different computer.
Finally, I turned Time Machine off and the drive immediately appeared in the Finder and is OK. The drive (a new FireLite formatted Mac OS Extended-Journaled) just won't work with Time Machine. For me, this all started after I turned on Spaces the first time.

Problems where you cannot eject a drive

OK, one thing that is really bugging me about my new iMac is that with certain actions it will not eject an external disk (or iPod) because the device contains files that are purportedly in use by another application. Thing is...they aren't...at least by me. Examples include when I try to back up my Home Folder files (low tech drag and drop way, without a backup program), and reformat/update my iPod software with a subsequent reloading of my songs.
Any thoughts?

no, not too obvious a suggestion...usually when i do the low-tech drag and drop of my home folder to the external drive, it's right after start up and nothing major is running (i know many processes run in the background upon startup, but i'm at a loss as to which ones of these are using the newly created files on my external drive).
as to the ipod update, i only run itunes...funny thing is that if you shut down itunes, it dismounts the ipod and sometimes if you re-open itunes, then re-sync the ipod, it ejects the device without problems.
this is happening even though i downloaded 10.4.6 and it was running same when my issues occurred.

Time Machine backups fail after initial drive connection, cannot eject drive

I have a Macbook Pro 13" Retina Display, 8GB running OS X Mavericks 10.9.4 and have set Time Machine backups to a 1TB WD My Passport. When I first connect the drive the backup will run fine, but subsequent backups always fail. In addition I typically cannot eject the drive. I've scoured online forums and have completely reformatted the drive, and have even deleted some backup settings files from the hard drive, none of these has resolved my issue.

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
In the top right corner of the Console window, there's a search box labeled Filter. Initially the words "String Matching" are shown in that box. Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes.) You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard."
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Note the timestamp of the last "Starting" message that corresponds to the beginning of an an abnormal backup. Now
CLEAR THE WORD "Starting" FROM THE TEXT FIELD
so that all messages are showing, and scroll back in the log to the time you noted. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
☞ If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the text field.
☞ The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
☞ Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Eject Firewire Hard Drive, Won't Stop Running

I upgraded my Early 2009 Mac Pro OS to 10.9 today, but I found a problem about my external firewire hard drive.
If I eject firewire hard drive under 10.8, the hard drive will stop running/rotating. Then I unplug the firewire cable. After I upgrade to 10.9 OS, the firewire hard drive will not stop running/rotating after I eject it. I cannot see any external hard drive icon on desktop, but I can hear the hard drive running sound.
I'm not sure if it's safe to unplug cable under running condition after succeful eject. How's many people have the same problem with me?
Thank you!

I have a dozen OWC cases and they have all continued to work (but can't say about 10.9) and they are getting "dated."
Apple though often changes drivers, IOKIt and how external drives are treated, 10.5.0 thru 10.5.2 the rules changed and changed back and forth. Some drives had to be off during startup. Users have had trouble with 10.6 as well with their drives, often USB and/or FW from major vendors (WD etc) not working.
Do either of you get the "drive was not ejected properly" message on the next time you do connect and power it back on or after a restart?
One of the reasons I prefer waiting for the .2 or later releases.

Cannot Boot from OSX on external firewire drive

I recently bought a seagate hardrive and installed it in an external firewire casing. I partitioned it into two partitions, and installed osx 10.4.10 on one of the partitions, the same as is running on my Ti Book.
I tried selecting the os on the firewire drive as the startup disk, but when i restart, after the grey screen i get the flashing question mark icon, until the mac recognises only the default osx on the internal drive and boots with that instead.
That not working, i created a clone of my startup disk using DejaVu in my system preferences and saved it on the other, empty partition on the external drive and tried booting from that.
On restarting, i get the grey screen once again as the backlight fires up, and nothing more. the screen remains grey without any further ado until i hold the power button and force it to turn off. then as i start it up again, up comes the flashing question mark icon followed by a boot from the internal drive.
Any Solutions on this?
Many Thanks, Neptune.

Hi Dale,
Whoops- everythings not as smooth as i thought it was!
since i restored my internal drive, a lot of things have been really messed up, starting with, for example, iTunes reverting to version 4 instead of 7. that wasnt a problem, i still had the 7 installer, and soon had my whole music library back again. but the computer appears to have a problem with the handling of graphics. the finder wont create previews of even simple jpeg images, nor will it for video. quicktime wont open any video file, i get some random error message which i cant remember stating it could not open the file. and if i view my finder window in grid icon view, the usual blue mac os desktop image that i keep as a background in the finder window isnt there, instead its pitch black. same goes for the slideshow feature in the application graphic converter, i can start a slideshow and it will scroll through the images, but every image will instead be completely black. there are no scroll bars in itunes. i can scroll down randomly by clicking where the scroll bar should be, but there is nothing visual there at all, no scroll bar, no arrows. when i connect my ipod, the main ipod window of itunes wont display any graphics either, be it the picture of the ipod or the capacity bar indicating usage of the drive for music, videos, data, etc. instead, fine print says something similar to 'cannot display image, quicktime and lzw tiff decompression plugin (?) required' I cant remember word for word what it says, dont quote me on that.
the computer also came to a dead freeze twice in ten minutes, i had to hold the power button down to get it to shut off.
im sure there are other issues too which i havent yet noticed, but even these, i havent the faintest clue what could be causing them!
do you?

I cannot eject a CD from my MacBook Pro. I tried restarting the computer and holding down the mouse and restarting it to no avail. On Finder, nothing is showing up on the CD Drive. Any ideas on how I can eject it?

I cannot eject a CD from my MacBook Pro. I tried restarting the computer and holding down the mouse and restarting it to no avail. On Finder, nothing is showing up on the CD Drive. Any ideas on how I can eject it?

How force eject disc: Apple Support Communities
Mac Mini: Eject DVD Apple Support Communities
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/49129/forceject-too
Get help with the slot-loading SuperDrive on your Mac computer - Apple Support

I cannot open Firefox without being prompted to drag the Firefox icon into My Applications. It also does not let me eject the drive while Firefox is open. If anyone could help, it would be appreciated.

I use a Mac. OS X.
I click on the Firefox icon to go online.
It opens up the drive that I originally used to install the update(3.6.15). I have to select open because it is an unknown application.
Firefox opens to the homepage.
I try to eject the drive.
It says "The disk 'Firefox' cannot be ejected because 'Firefox' is using it. Quit the application and try to eject the disk again."
I do that.
The same thing happens again and again.
I try to download the update again.
Same thing.
I won't download the Firefox 4 RC because it makes my online browsing very slow.

Make sure that Firefox gets installed properly.
* [[Installing Firefox on Mac]]
* http://kb.mozillazine.org/Installing_Firefox#Mac_OS_X

Please Help! - Cannot Access Or See External USB/Firewire Drive

Can anyone help or advise me as I’m really at a loss as how to fix a problem I have with my external hard drive and OX 10.4.6.
I had just completed a fresh install of OS X on my PowerPC iMac G5 using the “Erase & Install” feature.
Everything had gone extremely well, all my applications and settings had been re-set as I normally have them (I made backups) and was able to access my external hard disk, which is a Maxtor OneTouch USB/FireWire 250 GB model.
I then setup a second account for my brother, which I setup as a “Standard” account.
When I then went to access some of the files on my external disk and tried to copy them over to my Desktop, it refused me permission and said that I had to ask the permission of the “Owner’ which it said was Steve (my Brother) which was strange because as I said his account was only setup as a standard account whereas I had an administrator account (and am the main user of the computer).
I went into the Steve's account and looked at the Permissions information using the “Get Info” dialogue box. This showed that the owner was indeed Steve, so I changed it to my Name (Andrew) went back to my account, and found could no longer see the external disk at all.
Returning to Steve’s account I checked the permissions again, and asked it to ignore permissions.
But now I cannot see or access the disk at all in either account, it just does not show up on the desktop or in the Finder Sidebar.
The strange thing is I can see it in “Disk Utility” but when I ask it to either verify or Repair the Disk permissions, it reports that they are all or OK and “no repairs were necessary”.
I have tried connecting the disk with both types of connection - USB2 and the Firewire drive, and the results are exactly the same, the drive is not visible on the Desktop or the Finder Sidebar, but is visible to Disk Utility.
The disk is formatted as a ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled) drive
Can anyone please tell me how I can get my external disk to show on my computer again, as ALL my backup documents and programs are on the disk, and most of the data cannot be replaced.
Would doing a complete fresh install of the OS X operating system fix this as a last resort?
I hope someone can advise, as I really am desperate.
Thanks
Drusus
20' iMac G5 PowerPC (iSight) 1.5GB Ram Mac OS X (10.4.6)
20' iMac G5 PowerPC (iSight) 1.5GB Ram Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Yes, I didn't think it was very good either!
You are correct in I should have said "Repair Disk" - Verify Permissions is not available on the maxtor drive ( it is dimmed) in Repair Disk.
Until now, the drive has worked perfectly, and I did not install any of Maxtors software when I originally connected the drive to this system, I just formatted it as a Mac Extended and it worked great. It was only after the fresh Erase & Install - even then it worked fine. It was only when I created a new account that the problem started.
What I have done is get hold of a demo version of a program called "Mac Drive 6" which allows you to read any Mac formatted disk or drive on a Windows system, - fortunately i still have my Windows XP Pro system which I have also connected to my home network.
So for the next four days (the length of the demo) I can access all of my files on the disk and copy them to my Windows system.
This is really great because I have all my data and images back which were my biggest concern.
I thought I might get another drive anyhow, and when I have everything backed up on a new drive and on the Windows system, I can then reformat the Maxtor drive and start afresh with it.
Thanks for all your help anyhow.

Hey guys, so I have a DVD stuck in the CD drive on my mac. It reads it as being in there, but I cannot eject it and it is causing my a lot of issues with my mac. If i try to eject it, Finder acts up and I have issues saving projects or even browsing files

hey guys, so I have a DVD stuck in the CD drive on my mac. It reads it as being in there, but I cannot eject it and it is causing my a lot of issues with my mac. If i try to eject it, Finder acts up and I have issues saving projects or even browsing files. I feel like it interferes with iPhoto as well because it says it is locked and I have no rights to view it. I wanted to see if anyone else had/s this issue and how you fixed it before lugging it into the apple store and being without a computer for a few weeks...

A few other suggestions here as well:
http://osxdaily.com/2009/08/28/eject-a-stuck-disk-from-your-mac-dvd-super-drive/

Firewire issues? Cannot Eject anything firewire..

So.. anything I connect via firewire, cf card in a firewire reader, external firewire hard drives, ipods.. will not eject.. when I try to eject any of these items I get a message saying "The disk ___ is in use and could not be ejected. Try quitting applications and try again" ... I have no applications running and this applies to all my firewire devices.. is it possible the whole firewire system is no good? or possibly a corrupt preference in the system? any thoughts? I have disconnected all devices and tried just one at a time thinking that maybe one particular device was causing the problem but it seems to be system wide..

Okay.. so the cd was actually not hard to eject, I have found if you hit the eject button during startup it will usually spit out the disc and it did.. so I have it out now. Without a disc inserted the eject key on the keyboard will open and close the drawer. But I am still unable to eject any drives, ipod, etc.. and actually.. I needed to install a program for something else and the disk image that was created from the dmg file is now on my desktop and my computer will not allow it to be ejected. Any other thoughts? The computer works fine otherwise with no apparent problems.

Cannot eject FireWire drives

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