Ejecting external drives taking too long (~10secs)

[3bs]

So ever since I upgraded from 10.8.5 to the 10.9 GM any external hard disk or flash drive take too long to eject. I'm sure it's not the drives because I've tested the same one on different laptpops on 10.9 and 10.8 but they eject within a second or two. I even timed it to show you I'm not being paranoid. I've tried USB 2.0, 3.0 and Thunderbolt drives.

Is anyone having this issue and does anyone know how to fix it? I would rather avoid having to do a clean install. I'm using a mid 2012 MBA.

 

[3bs]

So I did a clean install of Mavericks but the problem has persisted.

I also noticed that when I go to erase a USB drive in Disk Utility I get an error saying it can't unmount the drive.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Bear]

The extra time for dismounting drives may have to do with the way file caching works in 10.9.

What's the full error you get when you try and erase a USB drive? Something probably has files open on the disk which would prevent unmounting. The spotlight database is probably open on the USB disk and that could be what Disk Utility is tripping over in 10.9. If so this is a change form 10.8 behavior.

 

[3bs]

The extra time for dismounting drives may have to do with the way file caching works in 10.9.

What's the full error you get when you try and erase a USB drive? Something probably has files open on the disk which would prevent unmounting. The spotlight database is probably open on the USB disk and that could be what Disk Utility is tripping over in 10.9. If so this is a change form 10.8 behavior.

I've tried 2 flash drives and a hard disk and they all eject in 1-2 secs max on my friends Air with the same hardware. Same thing with formatting, it works fine on his.

Even after formatting a flash drive and it's completely empty, there's a delay in ejecting it. That makes no sense to me

Here's the error

 

[Bear]

I've tried 2 flash drives and a hard disk and they all eject in 1-2 secs max on my friends Air with the same hardware. Same thing with formatting, it works fine on his.

Even after formatting a flash drive and it's completely empty, there's a delay in ejecting it. That makes no sense to me

Here's the error
View attachment 443639

When you did a clean install of Mavericks, was that with no data migration or installation of any apps? If not, you may have an app that is doing something odd on your system, or a system setting got mangled in the migration.

 

[3bs]

When you did a clean install of Mavericks, was that with no data migration or installation of any apps? If not, you may have an app that is doing something odd on your system, or a system setting got mangled in the migration.

I started out completely fresh and manually reinstalled everything.

 

[Bear]

I started out completely fresh and manually reinstalled everything.

I suggest you start completely fresh and test after each step to see if you can figure out what software is causing the issue. It sounds like something you've installed may be an issue.

 

[3bs]

I suggest you start completely fresh and test after each step to see if you can figure out what software is causing the issue. It sounds like something you've installed may be an issue.

I just checked my apps and the only one I could see causing this was OmniDiskSweeper. I deleted it and restarted and the problem seems to have gone away. I will keep checking throughout the day to make sure that's what was causing it.

Thanks for the help

 

[dperel15]

im getting the exact same problem...was running developer previews and GM, finally decided to do a clean install and reinstall all my apps fresh and the problem persists. i don't have omnidisksweeper though....

my battery life isn't very good neither. i do not run crazy apps and am only getting 7-9 hours battery life.

 

[Benjamin99]

My drives also take a long time to eject. This has changed since I installed 10.9, I'd say about twice as long as before. This behavior on my iMac and rMBP both with 10.9. I also notice that it takes longer for a disc to eject from the optical drive on my iMac than before.

 

[chadvonnau]

I'm getting the same thing in Mavericks 10.9.0 on a new rMBP. Both external disks and disk images are taking a long time to eject. ~5-10 seconds.

 

[3bs]

My drives also take a long time to eject. This has changed since I installed 10.9, I'd say about twice as long as before. This behavior on my iMac and rMBP both with 10.9. I also notice that it takes longer for a disc to eject from the optical drive on my iMac than before.

im getting the exact same problem...was running developer previews and GM, finally decided to do a clean install and reinstall all my apps fresh and the problem persists. i don't have omnidisksweeper though....

my battery life isn't very good neither. i do not run crazy apps and am only getting 7-9 hours battery life.

I'm getting the same thing in Mavericks 10.9.0 on a new rMBP. Both external disks and disk images are taking a long time to eject. ~5-10 seconds.

I'm still getting it so it wasn't that app. I'm not sure what to do because I already tried a fresh install.

 

[vrsnake]

I'm also having this problem since installing Mavericks, and I'm at 10.9.1 now with same issue. Has no one found an answer? Happens on both real external drives & DMGs.

 

[w0lf]

Anything show up in console when you try to eject?

 

[jbarley]

After reading this thread I ran some tests for myself.
System is a 2012 mini running OS X 10.9.1

Unmounting disk images is instantaneous
Unmounting USB thumb drives, almost instantaneous, like 1 or 2 seconds.

I cannot offer any explanation for this which might be of help to you.

 

[vrsnake]

Anything show up in console when you try to eject?

No, just the eject message from kernel after about 10 seconds.

 

[cerberusss]

I wonder if there's a process that is using the external drive.

What you could do, is open a terminal and type "mount" to see what volumes are mounted. The last line is usually your external drive. Use the lsof command, and as the parameter, use the path to the external drive.

For example on my system, I just inserted a Kingston 16 GB stick, and viewed its contents in Finder. Then I opened a file with TextEdit.

Now in terminal:

 $ mount
 /dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
 devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
 map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse) 
 map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
 /dev/disk1s1 on /Volumes/MUSIC (msdos, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners)
 /dev/disk2s1 on /Volumes/NO NAME (msdos, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners)

Now use lsof to find any processes that have opened files on the drive. Use double quotes if the path contains a space or something.

 $ lsof "/Volumes/NO NAME"
 COMMAND PID   USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
 Finder  213 bartvk   15r   REG    1,7     1021  179 /Volumes/NO NAME/boot.ini

As you see, it's not totally accurate because instead of TextEdit, it'll say Finder. Note that if lsof doesn't show output, then no process has opened anything on the volume.

 

[vrsnake]

Hi cerberusss, The output of mount for the drive I was testing was:

[B]/dev/disk7s2 on /Volumes/ccSys (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)[/B]

But unfortunately their was no output from the command lsof "/Volumes/ccSys" either just before, or during, the ejecting of ccSys.

Any other ideas?

 

[riinspace]

I'm also having this problem since the upgrade to Mavericks a couple of months ago. And I don't find any processes trying to access the external drive either.

btw, the drive still ejects as swiftly as always on Macs with older systems.

Getting a little tired of this now, since I actually have to go through this process like twenty times a day. And there is quite a difference between 0.5 secs and 10 secs … like 20 times … at least.

 

[3bs]

I'm also having this problem since the upgrade to Mavericks a couple of months ago. And I don't find any processes trying to access the external drive either.



btw, the drive still ejects as swiftly as always on Macs with older systems.



Getting a little tired of this now, since I actually have to go through this process like twenty times a day. And there is quite a difference between 0.5 secs and 10 secs … like 20 times … at least.

If you find a solution please post back.

 

[blackboxxx]

I'm getting the same issue here on 2009 13" MBP (10.9.1, updated from 10.8.5).
Physical drives and disk images take exactly 10 seconds to eject. Neither filesystem (HFS+ or FAT32) makes a difference, nor the size of the drive (1 MB disk image vs. 2 TB external drive).
Even read-only disk images (like software downloads) that shouldn't have any caches or spotlight databases to update take the same 10 seconds.

Since the delay is always the same, I guess the system waits for something before giving up after 10 second timeout. If only we knew what that something was...

 

[3bs]

I'm getting the same issue here on 2009 13" MBP (10.9.1, updated from 10.8.5).

Physical drives and disk images take exactly 10 seconds to eject. Neither filesystem (HFS+ or FAT32) makes a difference, nor the size of the drive (1 MB disk image vs. 2 TB external drive).

Even read-only disk images (like software downloads) that shouldn't have any caches or spotlight databases to update take the same 10 seconds.



Since the delay is always the same, I guess the system waits for something before giving up after 10 second timeout. If only we knew what that something was...

It's a really weird and annoying bug.

 

[blackboxxx]

I accidentally fixed this problem on my system. I was comparing the contents of system folders with a fresh install of 10.9.2 and deleting old files that were left over from previous upgrades. Then a couple of days later I noticed that the hard drives, USB sticks and disk images now eject much faster instead of taking 10 seconds.

One of the files was /etc/authorization.deprecated. When performing an upgrade, Mavericks installer renames authorization to authorization.deprecated.
However, this file is not present in a fresh install, so it should be safe to delete (or at least to rename/move aside temporarily).

I'm not 100% sure that it's the file responsible for eject delays, so please give it a try and tell us if it works.

 

[LordVic]

one of many issues i've been encountering with Mavericks on my 2011 MBA

10-15seconds to eject USB disks. Even ones that I only had plugged in to wipe clean.

10seconds isn't Terrible. But it seems like a weird unreasonable time to just boot a USB stick out.

 

[jaxparo]

Eject Slow FIXED, Faster Eject Solution

I accidentally fixed this problem on my system. I was comparing the contents of system folders with a fresh install of 10.9.2 and deleting old files that were left over from previous upgrades. Then a couple of days later I noticed that the hard drives, USB sticks and disk images now eject much faster instead of taking 10 seconds.

One of the files was /etc/authorization.deprecated. When performing an upgrade, Mavericks installer renames authorization to authorization.deprecated.
However, this file is not present in a fresh install, so it should be safe to delete (or at least to rename/move aside temporarily).

I'm not 100% sure that it's the file responsible for eject delays, so please give it a try and tell us if it works.

I have an upgraded 10.8.5->10.9.1 MacPro 1,1 with 2,1 firmware & CPUs which has the "/etc/authorization" file which does NOT say "authorization.depricated". I assume this is because I installed using SFOTT perhaps? I made a copy of this file for safe keeping, and deleted it. Voilà! You are CORRECT, external drives now eject instantly! (without a reboot, simply by moving /etc/authorization to the Trash.