External HDD won't eject

[Mildredop]

I have an external hard drive which often won't eject. It says that some programs may be using it, even when I quit every application.

Problem is, if I force eject, it then takes about twenty minutes to show-up the next time I plug it in.

Any solutions?

 

[Audit13]

Does force ejecting make a difference?

Are you running any 3rd party driver software such as Paragon or Tuxera?

 

[Fishrrman]

Power the Mac down, all the way to "off".

Then, disconnect the drive.

Then, restart the Mac.

That oughta do it...

 

[ZapNZs]

Is the drive allowed to be indexed by Spotlight or has this feature been disabled? - if you disable Spotlight for the drive and restart the computer, does this fix the issue?

You could try in terminal " sudo lsof | grep VOLUMENAME " for a list of running processes that could potentially cause this

 

[Taz Mangus]

I have an external hard drive which often won't eject. It says that some programs may be using it, even when I quit every application.

Problem is, if I force eject, it then takes about twenty minutes to show-up the next time I plug it in.

Any solutions?

Try logging out of your user account and logging back in again.

 

[ddmcnair]

This reminds me of the joke about BlondeStar: "Hello, this is BlondeStar, how may we Help." Reply, "Yeah, uh, like I am stuck in my car and can't like get out...."

OK, now let us ask, how is the drive formatted? Have you tried running with Disk Utility? How about repartition and reformatting?

 

[artisticint]

Recently (High Sierra) I’ve found that force quitting Finder (via Apple logo top left and Force Quit...) has been solving the problem for me every time: and there have been a lot of times!