HUGE problem: Drives not ejecting and OS X creating clones when reconnected

[hb21]

I have a 1TB external drive and I used to be able to eject it normally but now i get the "one or more programs may be using it" dialog and even when I force eject nothing will happen and I have to remove it without ejecting.

Even when I open dmg's, they will not eject!

Now, the worst part of this is that not only will the drives and dmg's fail to eject, but whenever i reconnect the 1TB drive or any USB stick, OS X will keep the old icon (which i could not eject) and create a new icon with the same name and icon as the reconnected drive.

This applies to the 1TB, usb sticks, and dmg's...

any suggestions??

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Which version of Mac OS X are you using? If you have Snow Leopard, the eject dialog should tell you what's using the drive. If you do NOT have Snow Leopard, or the eject dialog gives you an unhelpful error message instead, there's another way to identify the culprit. Have you ever read your Console logs before? If not, open Applications -> Utilities -> Console, which gives you access to your system's log files. Look for events just before and after failed eject attempts.

 

[hb21]

Which version of Mac OS X are you using? If you have Snow Leopard, the eject dialog should tell you what's using the drive. If you do NOT have Snow Leopard, or the eject dialog gives you an unhelpful error message instead, there's another way to identify the culprit. Have you ever read your Console logs before? If not, open Applications -> Utilities -> Console, which gives you access to your system's log files. Look for events just before and after failed eject attempts.

i have snow leopard but the eject dialog only has "forc eject" "cancel" "try again" and a question mark that doesn't go anywhere useful..
i will try posting what i find in the log...

 

[hb21]

this is what i'm getting b4 and after and all over the log :S

2/24/11 3:18:07 PM kernel disk3s0s2: media is not present.
2/24/11 3:20:27 PM fseventsd[30] Events arrived for /Volumes/My Book 2 after an unmount request! Re-initializing.
2/24/11 3:20:31 PM kernel disk2s2: media is not present.
2/24/11 3:20:31 PM kernel disk4s2: media is not present.

the "media is not present" repeats an enormous amount of time

 

[wrldwzrd89]

this is what i'm getting b4 and after and all over the log :S

2/24/11 3:18:07 PM kernel disk3s0s2: media is not present.
2/24/11 3:20:27 PM fseventsd[30] Events arrived for /Volumes/My Book 2 after an unmount request! Re-initializing.
2/24/11 3:20:31 PM kernel disk2s2: media is not present.
2/24/11 3:20:31 PM kernel disk4s2: media is not present.

the "media is not present" repeats an enormous amount of time

That isn't too helpful... just tells us what we already know.

That being said, have a look at Activity Monitor. Does it suggest any possible processes to quit?

 

[hb21]

nothing useful in activity monitor...

i even downloaded "what's keeping me" and it can't find anything...

this is such a weird problem