External USB 3.0 WD HDD Needs Force Eject Every Time

[2499723]

I have an external USB 3.0 WD MyPassport plugged into my retina MacBook Pro, and when I go to eject it, I get the following message:

'The disk “INSERT DRIVE NAME” wasn’t ejected because one or more programs may be using it.'

I have closed all applications, and have gone into Activity Monitor to see if anything is going on. I've turned off Time Machine and removed the drive from the Spotlight index. The drive is sometimes spun all the way down and I still cannot eject it without a force eject. Any ideas?

 

[DemFromSC]

can't eject external hard drive

I have an external USB 3.0 WD MyPassport plugged into my retina MacBook Pro, and when I go to eject it, I get the following message:

'The disk “INSERT DRIVE NAME” wasn’t ejected because one or more programs may be using it.'

I have closed all applications, and have gone into Activity Monitor to see if anything is going on. I've turned off Time Machine and removed the drive from the Spotlight index. The drive is sometimes spun all the way down and I still cannot eject it without a force eject. Any ideas?

With a lot of reading, I finally figured out how to solve this problem with my own WD My Passport external hard drive and a MacBook Pro. Try the following (which worked for me):

- go into "System Preferences"
- at the bottom of the following screen, you will see a category labeled "other"
- on my Mac, there was an icon named "WD QuickView"
- click on "WD QuickView"
- check the box labeled "stop and remove from login items"

My uneducated guess as to why this works is that the "WD QuickView" program was running in the background; that's why my Mac was telling me that it couldn't eject the external drive because "a background program was using it".

As far as I can tell, the "WD QuickView" program is non-essential to the working of the external disk, but I don't know what is does.

 

[old-wiz]

Did you install any of the WD crapware uitlities? If so get rid of them.

 

[mhmyers]

It's probably because Spotlight is busy trying to index it.

Go to Spotlight prefs->privacy and add the disk.