Problems ejecting external drives

I have a number of external drives used for backup, and apart from the drives failing (which has been too often for comfort) I have never had a problem with the ejection mechanism. Until Mountain Lion.
I have just spent an afternoon trying to make a LaCie disk work properly.
For the past week or so the computer kept saying that the disk could not be ejected - do I want to force eject, which I did.
Today it did not even give that option, merely saying that the disk was in use. This certainly wasn't the case unless there is a rogue program somewhere on my system. One message did indicate that the System UI Server was the culprit, but other messages gave no clue.
Having saved all the files on the disk to the main hard drive, I played around with some disk utilities, but got nowhere because the utilities, including Apple's own, couldn't unmount the drive.
Having tried everything rational I decided on the irrational and just unplugged the disk. This appeared to work. It responded normally initially and I was able to reformat the disk. But the problem came back. I assumed that the disk had become corrupted and put it to the side.
I then tried another external disk. And this one will not eject either. The system says it is being used, which is certainly not the case.
I never ever had a problem with ejecting disks before Mountain Lion.
Is anyone else having this problem? Has anyone found a work around?

You can download the updates:
10.8.2 combo updater: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1580
10.8.2 supplemental update: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1611
You also might file a bug report with Apple so they know that some people are having a problem:
Feedback: http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Similar Messages

Problem ejecting external drive

I have an external drive attached to my I-Mac which I have always done in the past without a problem. I can't eject the drive because it says that it is in use. I believe this is an error message. How do I find out what the drive is being used for? I'm hoping once that's cleared up, I'll be able to eject the drive. If it is simply an error message, then how do I eject the drive safely?

I don't have an answer for this yet, but I have an additional clue. I've had this happen to me a couple of times since upgrading to Leopard. The first time I was able to fix it by quitting all programs and logging out completely, and then logging in as a different user and ejecting the disk from that account. And now I currently have the same issue, but I've been working so I couldn't take the time to log myself out just to eject an external disk.
What I did find out about it, in my case, is that it seems to be related to the new auto-activation feature for fonts. A quick check to see what files are open on the drive that won't eject reveals:
Lightning:/> lsof /Volumes/Backup\ 2
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
ATSServer 1187 disco txt REG 14,6 32892 71832 /Volumes/Backup 2/Backups/disco/Fonts/VT102Font/..namedfork/rsrc
So somehow Leopard found a font buried in a non-standard location on a backup disk and opened it... It shows up in my fonts menu in TextEdit, for example, but it does not show up on FontBook so I haven't found a way to turn it back off so I can eject the disk. I did go to the FontBook preferences and found where "Automatic font activation" is turned on by default and also checked "Ask me before activating", which was turned off... Hopefully from now on that will let me head off rogue font activation before it becomes an issue.

Problem "ejecting" external drive after spotlight indexes it

I had posted to a string that I can't find. Anyway, I've installed Leopard on my 2.0 GHz MacBook. I had to erase all my data to install. (I was in a loop for a little bit but the install kicked in eventually.) After installing Leopard, I attached an external HD to it to transfer some documents, music, etc. that was on the MacBook before. That all went well. I have not done any configurations for Time Machine.
I am trying to "eject" this hard drive and I keeping getting a message "The disk "NAME OF DRIVE" is in use and could not be ejected. Try quitting applications and try again."
What initially happened was that spotlight was automatically indexing it. That is over. I still can't eject it.
I'm out of all applications except "Finder" which is always on. This is a MacBook that is now tied to my desk until I can disconnect this external drive from it. I'm afraid of just unplugging it from the firewire as I've had a similar drive crash when I did that on another mac a few months ago.
I've done "restart" and turned it off and restarted manually. The drive still won't eject.
Any help is appreciated. I haven't been able to figure it out so far.
Some additional info: The external drive does have "clone" copies of the applications that were on my MacBook before I had my MacBook "erased" to install Leopard. I don't have any of those applications running. I don't think that would matter, but the message keeps saying to quit applications.
Thanks

I don't have an answer for this yet, but I have an additional clue. I've had this happen to me a couple of times since upgrading to Leopard. The first time I was able to fix it by quitting all programs and logging out completely, and then logging in as a different user and ejecting the disk from that account. And now I currently have the same issue, but I've been working so I couldn't take the time to log myself out just to eject an external disk.
What I did find out about it, in my case, is that it seems to be related to the new auto-activation feature for fonts. A quick check to see what files are open on the drive that won't eject reveals:
Lightning:/> lsof /Volumes/Backup\ 2
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
ATSServer 1187 disco txt REG 14,6 32892 71832 /Volumes/Backup 2/Backups/disco/Fonts/VT102Font/..namedfork/rsrc
So somehow Leopard found a font buried in a non-standard location on a backup disk and opened it... It shows up in my fonts menu in TextEdit, for example, but it does not show up on FontBook so I haven't found a way to turn it back off so I can eject the disk. I did go to the FontBook preferences and found where "Automatic font activation" is turned on by default and also checked "Ask me before activating", which was turned off... Hopefully from now on that will let me head off rogue font activation before it becomes an issue.

Folder problems on external drive, not showing correct file size

I've run across a strange problem. I'm media managing for a tv show, meaning I'm offloading video from CF cards onto 2 external drives, one is a Drobo Raid (set up for backup) and another is a Lacie rugged drive. After copying the media to both drives, the folder I copy will match, but sometimes as I drill upward in my folder structure, suddenly the file sizes will not match. To be more clear: 2 folders will show differing file sizes, but inside that folder is only another folder,nothing else, which matches across the drives. I've shown all files in finder and there's no hidden files, though sometimes I see the ds_store files are different sizes (8k vs 16k), but that's not always the case. Sometimes if I simply create a new folder and move it's contents into it I can get the folders to match, but sometimes that doesn't work. It's part of my workflow to show that these copies match exactly via screenshots, and although the most important folder (the direct folder holding the footage) always matches, these folder problems are super frustrating as it's not constant, and any workarounds also work inconsistantly.
I had an accidental disconnect of the Drobo one time, and although none of the data seems to have any problem, I fear it's done something to the directory. The rugged drive is swapped out every few days and the problem seems to be on the Drobo. Because the nature of the data is pretty important, I'm afraid to just try messing around with repairing or other software solutions unless I know it's super safe and won't harm the data.
I'm at a loss as to what's causing it and at the very least how to avoid it cropping up. Any help or insight would be appreciated!

I had the same problem with my iMac, first I repaired the disk, then I ejected the disk, restarted, and then reinserted the USB in a different port. All of my files magically showed up. I don't know what caused the error but it has been working fine since.

OS X Yosemite 10.10.1 randomly ejecting external drives

HI there.
I have a 15" MacBook pro late 2008 (5,1) with 4Gb of ram. It has 3 external drives attached. One WD Studio 1Tb via FireWire 800 and 2 newer WD 3Tb drives via USB.
ON the studio drive is my iTunes library and I am trying to move it to the new (2 weeks old) 3Tb drive. iTunes can read the Studio drive ok and even play items from it but copying the data through Finder or even just accessing the drive sometimes forces an eject.
THe eject is so quick that it doesn't drop off the desktop and Finder rarely reports a force eject, but it's enough to stop the read, copy or move that is in progress.
The only way to get the drive back and working is to power the drive down and power back up and hope there is no corruption. This has happened once or twice with the USB based drives as well.
DIsk Utility, as long as the drive stays connected, report no problems. I've cleaned the contacts in the drive to rule out a contact fault and I've removed them from Spotlight.
Please help as I'd rather not have to rerip my CDs back into iTunes along with movies, apps etc.

OS X Mail: Troubleshooting sending and receiving email messages - Apple Support

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.

Auto mount/eject external drive for time machine backup/restore

I have an Iomega ultramax drive connected via firewire 800 for my Time machine backups.
This drive will automatically spin down after a period of non-use. I like this as it means lower power usage and lower risk of data loss (head crashes etc..).
My problem is, when the drive spins down like this, some file open operations pause until the drive spins up again. I cannot remember exactly which applications I have had the problem with, but I assumed that this was part of the OS. This delay can be up to 5 seconds or so and is really annoying.
Assuming this is not just a specific third party application thing. My suggestion to Apple is to do one or both of the following:
1) Multi thread the file open dialog (process?) so that is comes up instantly, and then adds the drive when it has spun up.
2) Modify time machine so that it can automatically mount/eject the external drive just when doing backups and restores.
Currently I have a bit of a messy work around to this problem where I have a loadd scheduled shell script that runs every hour that mounts the drive, runs time machine to backup and the ejects the drive. It works, but is not perhaps as nice a solution as it could be.
Does anybody else suffer from this problem?

Yes that is correct, the drive spins down and remains mounted.
To be perhaps clearer. The problem is not essentially a time machine problem, it is to do with whatever implements the file open capability that other apps use. In the above sitation, there is always a delay for the drive to spin up when I go to open a file (perhaps five seconds) in other applications. I assume this delay is caused by the file open process waiting until some data is retrieved from the external drive before giving me the option of choosing a file. This delay is annoying, as I do not ever want to open a file from my external drive (this is dedicated to time machine backups) when I am using pages, or any other application other than a time machine restore.
This particular issue is similar (but I suspect nowhere near as bad) as one of my pet hates about windows XP. In windows it appears that the explorer will wait for a response on all its connected drives (hard disks, mounted cds, network drives), so any sort of network connectivity or hardware delay will cause explorer to freeze. As explorer seems to be embedded in most things you do with the OS, this can cause anything or everything to freeze (web browsing, you name it).
In my setup, as I have the external drive totally dedicated to time machine backups, another thing that would fix the problem for me is the suggestion number 2 I suggested where time machine auto mounts for the backup and then ejects after the backup. With the feature, then the external drrive will only ever be mounted for short periods of time (the above problem does not ocurr if the external drive is not mounted), and when it is mounted it will be spinning, so I will never have my file open delay. I would however have a short delay when doing a time machine restore for the mount of the drive, but this is a much rarer event the using file open in all my other apps.
Thanks for the info on the feedback link, I will post this to that.

RE: Capture Problems on External Drive/Audio drift over time

Greetings FCP gurus -
I posted earlier on the LAFCPUG board and now seek worldwide assistance with a problem I can't seem to resolve.
Been working in FCP since 1.5. Been successfully capturing on external FW devices for over 4 years with an old 500 MHz Powerbook - no problems.
I recently upgraded to FCP 5 Studio on a PowerBook 1.5 GHZ 512 RAM FW 4/8 machine. Prior to upgrade, I was running Panther (OS X 10.3X) and FCP 4.5 HD. This configuration allowed me to flawlessly capture to external FW drives from Panasonic AJ-D250 DVCPRO deck using a standard DVNTSC codec. Prior to that I was also able to do the same from a Sony DSR-11 deck. No longer.
I now get a constant audio "drift" every time I capture. I've tried shortening the clips to under 10 minutes - even as small as 5 minutes - but the audio progressively drifts as the clip plays on. This is true in both FCP and QT. I completely reformatted the laptop/wiped the drive prior to install (Unjournaled) and it currently has 25 gig available disk space on the 80 gig internal drive. Additionally, I'm using LaCie 7200 RPM Oxford 911 chip-set external drives. I've tried with clean D2 FW 800 and Porsche FW 400 drives to no avail - even reformatted one and still no luck.
Current configurations attempted:
FW 800 PB port to FW 800 drive port/DVCPRO deck to FW 400 PB port
FW 800 PB port to FW 800 drive port/DVCPRO deck to FW 400 drive port
FW 400 PB port to FW 400 drive port/DVCPRO deck to FW 400 drive port
..and so on.
I'm at wit's end and appreciate any insight. Is anyone else having issues capturing to External FW media via FCP 5 Studio/OSX 10.4.x? I don't currently have the option of internal drives to capture as I'm working at a client site. Additionally, I sold my FCP 4.X upgrade software so going backwards is not an option either... Even took the deck home and tried this same trick on my home machine (Dual 500 G4 Sawtooth) to the internal ATA drive with the same result -...drifting audio. Since upgrade this is my first capture and needless to say it's not going well.
Help, information and insight are greatly appreciated. Thanks

Hi Expressofiend! Were you able to resolve this issue yet? We are having an IDENTICAL problem. We shoot on a Canon XL2, and thought that might be causing the audio drifting issue? We also have a Panasonic AD-J 250 deck, and when we capture, say an interview, the lip sync is perfect for a few minutes, then drifts as much as a second or two over 20 minutes of capture. It's making us crazy. Happens when we capture to an external LaCie or our internal drive. We're using Apple's 2.7 gig duel processor computer. 2 Gig of ram, all the latest versions of Tiger, Final Cut Pro 5, etc. If we look at the Quicktime movie - it shows the audio drift - you don't even need to view it through Final Cut!
Interestingly, if we use the Canon XL2 camera as the source player when we capture the 20 minute piece - there is NO audio drift or syncing problem. Only with the AJD 250! We've spoken with the senior engineer at Panasonic - he doesn't think it's the DVCPro unit. Says drifting audio isn't the kind of thing an out of adjustment or broken deck would do.
Anyway, any answers here yet?
Thanks,
Larry

Finder crashes when ejecting external drive

Hi have had my Macbook Pro (i5 early 2011) a month now and its crashed about 8-9 times, mostly it happens when trying to eject my external hard drive, the drive won't eject, so I tried a relaunch on finder, then finder disappears completely although everything else continues to work, I can access the Dock and utilities, Finder doesn't show up in Activity monitor. I have no choice but to do a hard restart. I thought it was the external drive as I had it partioned to MS-DOS and exfat but I just did a format and now its HFS with an exfat partition. Anyone any ideas? is it my Macbook, Lion or the drive you think?

I have the same issue by the sounds of it.
I am on clean install number three and all goes well, updates, move pics and music from external and reinstall all applications from fresh but when I complete a backup of the machine t an external drive, Finder seems to crash at random poionts or when thte backups try to eject the drive. I am at the end of my teather!
Will

Should I eject external drives when I shut down my Mac?

Hello to all,
This might be a very elementary question to some, but I trust I will be given the proper answer. I have been using my Mac for nearly a year and I have not been ejecting my external drive/s once a day's work is over. I use the drop down menu to either put the Mac to sleep or shut it down. I allow the power to be on for the multi-socket spike from which my Mac and my drives get their power. Is this right or wrong? Any guidance in this matter will be appreciated.

baltwo wrote:
FWIW, I never sleep desktop machines or their HDs, only their displays, and run 24/7, but do power down ext HDs and printers, since they're seldom used.
Hello and thanks baltwo. Sorry for this apparent delay in responding to your reply, reason being I did not have much time to sit on my Mac on account of the Festival of Peace being conducted here in Hyderabad where I stay. Am having a blessed time here attending the meetings.
Your reply has been worded precisley and I trust you are saying this:
You do not shut down or put your Mac to sleep, but put the display to sleep; and that you switch of the power to your ext drives and printers. Am I right?
I have with me a Buffalo thunderbolt [1 TB], a 2 TB, LaCie [2 TB] and 2 Seagate [2 TB] external drives. I was in the habit of having these drives mounted even though when I had no need of all of them. The Apple technician who had come to remove the RAM [see above] informed me that it was not a good thing to have all the drives connected at the same time. Since then I am trying to keep only those drives for which I had need mounted.
The thunderbolt has no external power supply and hence, if I have no need of its services, I have to eject it and then unplug it from the back of the Mac. The LaCie has a power switch conveniently located on the drive itself and ejecting it and unpowering it should be easy. For the Seagate drives, after ejecting them, I need to remove the power adapters from the power spike. At the end of the day, when one is tired, all these different processes may be cumbersome to me, but I would not mind adopting it if I could be instructed as to how this method of yours scores over the other method in which one shuts down the computer. My next thanks is awaiting you!
Cheers and have agreat day.

Problem with external drive (OS X 10.9.4)

after i upgrade the OS,my iMac can't eject my external hard drive
and the "Tuxera" was gone from system preference...
it comes like this when i try to verify the disk..
===== Saturday, July 12, 2014 at 3:16:30 AM Western Indonesia Time =====
2014-07-12 03:16:33 +0700: Verifying volume “disk1s1”
2014-07-12 03:16:33 +0700: Starting verification tool:
2014-07-12 03:16:33 +0700: Checking file system
2014-07-12 03:16:33 +0700: ** /dev/disk1s1
2014-07-12 03:16:33 +0700: Invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block: 000000
2014-07-12 03:16:33 +0700: Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
2014-07-12 03:16:33 +0700:
2014-07-12 03:16:33 +0700: Disk Utility stopped verifying “disk1s1”: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
2014-07-12 03:16:33 +0700:
and then i clicked repair disk and this one comes...
2014-07-12 03:16:33 +0700:
2014-07-12 03:18:28 +0700: Verify and Repair volume “disk1s1”
2014-07-12 03:18:28 +0700: Starting repair tool:
2014-07-12 03:18:28 +0700: Checking file system
2014-07-12 03:18:31 +0700: ** /dev/disk1s1
2014-07-12 03:18:31 +0700: Invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block: 000000
2014-07-12 03:18:31 +0700: Volume repair complete.
2014-07-12 03:18:31 +0700: Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
2014-07-12 03:18:31 +0700: Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
2014-07-12 03:18:31 +0700:
2014-07-12 03:18:31 +0700: Disk Utility stopped repairing “disk1s1”: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
2014-07-12 03:18:31 +0700:
anyone please help me,i don't understand about programming..
and i/m sorry for my bad English..
thanks you guys

Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
You need to copy all the data off the drive then erase and reformat. If you do not have enough room on your internal drive you would need to buy an external drive to copy the data. If the drive cannot be repaired, then you would have to buy a new drive as a replacement.
If your data saved on the drive does not exist anywhere else, it's always good to have a backup of the drive in cases like this where the drive need repair.

10.5.7 update results in major problem with external drives

yesterday I did the 10.5.7 update and now I can't access any of my external hard drives. The message is "you do not have proper privileges". Have tried downloading/installing the combo update, running permissions repair with Disk Utility, even tried reinstalling my original 10.5.2 system with 'Archive and Install', still the problem persists.
In the privileges dialog, the setting is 'custom' and I can't switch anything back to "read/write".
I'm sure there are other problems but this is quite major as all my work files are located in external drives.
help!

Is it only Lacie drives you've had trouble with, or is it other brands as well?
This is probably a separate problem, but when I updated to OS X 10.5.7, my Buffalo hard drives disappeared. See these threads:
External Hard Drives not recognized now by 10.5.7
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2010075&tstart=0
Don't install 10.5.7
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2004304&tstart=60&start=15
Buffalo has since released a patch:
http://forums.buffalotech.com/buffalo/board/message?board.id=0101&thread.id=9986

How to "eject" external drive on pc

hi,
i'm used to ejecting my external drives on my mac.
on my pc, there is no "right-click" option or any other that i can find to eject my Lacie drive.
is it okay to simply unplug the external lacie from the pc?
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Navigate to:
My Computer>CD Drive Right Mouse Click, select Eject.

Problem reading external drive after switching enclosures

My Time Machine backup was on a 2 TB WD My Essential external drive. I run a 2008 iMac that doesn't support USB3 speeds so I removed the drive from the WD enclosure and put it in a Rocstor enclosure that uses Firewire 800. After switching enclosures, my iMac wouldn't read the drive without formatting it. Anyone know why that is? Does it have something to do with the firmware on the HD itself? It was no big deal as I was going to format and partition the drive anyway. I would just like to know why going from USB to Firewire would cause it to do that. BTW, after reformating the drive, it appears to be working just fine as it did before.

No it is not a problem with the firmware on the drive. It has to do with the Firewire system on the Mac or any computer. I have the same thing happen when I have a drive that was using USB and put that drive in a FW adapter. Once in the FW adapter OS X wants to format it, actually initialize it. Once reconnected by USB again the drive works fine. You do know that you have voided the WD warranty on that unit by taking the drive out.

Problem using external drive as library for iTunes

I am using iTunes on a Mac, with a linked hard drive as the library for my music. Using the "add to library" feature, I am able to link the music on the external drive to iTunes (given the size of the library, I don't want it added to the Mac hard drive). This works perfectly until I need to reboot the Mac. After rebooting, all the songs in iTunes are displayed with an exclamation point and iTunes needs to be individually directed to their location. Basically, I am forced to add the entire library (and remove all the old songs) every time I reboot the Mac.
Is there a better solution to this? In addition to being inconvenient, it also causes me to lose all my old playlists, so I would like a more efficient solution to keeping the library after rebooting.

It sounds like the locations of your music files is not the same as the location identified within iTunes. In Preferences / Advanced, make sure "Keep iTunes music folder organized" is checked and verify that the location of your iTunes music folder is the same folder where your music files are located. If it isn't, you are going to want to change the location to the folder on your external HD and then consolidate your library. The next time you start iTunes, you won't have to re-add your music to your library as iTunes will be able to find it.
Click this link for clear direction on the necessary steps.

Problems ejecting external drives

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