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Leopard Won't Eject External USB HDD

M

MllePrecieux

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 12, 2007
21
0
I've been searching for days in my spare time and I can't find any similar threads. If there are, please forgive.

Connected my external HDD to my MBP after installing Leopard, and Time Machine worked just dandy. :D

Leopard will not however eject the disk, no matter how I do it (File>Eject; Cmd+E; pressing the lil eject button next to the disk closes the Finder window but nothing else). I got my MBP for mobility, but I am afraid to disconnect the HDD if I can't eject it. That ominous message about damaging my backed-up files may have something do with my trepidation.

Any suggestions? I'm a new n00b, admittedly, so I'm probably just muffing things up. :confused:

Thanks for your time. :)
 
same problem

I have the same problem but with a MB and when i click eject it tells me it cant eject because it is in use, i have turned off time machine backups because it dont want it to be in use but it still says that it is. this ruins portability if we cant eject the HD
 
Indeed. I thought I was the only one with this issue. Hopefully someone out there can help us ...
 
I've had this since Tiger. Still in Leopard as well. I just have to turn them off and hope for the best :)
 
MllePrecieux said:
I've been searching for days in my spare time and I can't find any similar threads. If there are, please forgive.

Connected my external HDD to my MBP after installing Leopard, and Time Machine worked just dandy. :D

Leopard will not however eject the disk, no matter how I do it (File>Eject; Cmd+E; pressing the lil eject button next to the disk closes the Finder window but nothing else). I got my MBP for mobility, but I am afraid to disconnect the HDD if I can't eject it. That ominous message about damaging my backed-up files may have something do with my trepidation.

Any suggestions? I'm a new n00b, admittedly, so I'm probably just muffing things up. :confused:

Thanks for your time. :)
Click to expand...

I had this problem few times. I unmounted/ejected the external HDD from the command line and it worked fine. I typed the following in Terminal (under Applications/Utilities):

umount /Volumes/My External HDD Name
 
TabulaRasa said:
I had this problem few times. I unmounted/ejected the external HDD from the command line and it worked fine. I typed the following in Terminal (under Applications/Utilities):

umount /Volumes/My External HDD Name
Click to expand...

This worked for me! Many thanks! :)
 
TabulaRasa said:
I had this problem few times. I unmounted/ejected the external HDD from the command line and it worked fine. I typed the following in Terminal (under Applications/Utilities):

umount /Volumes/My External HDD Name
Click to expand...

i keep getting a message that it doesnt exist? and i know im typing in the name right

umount/Volumes/"Time Machine Backups"
 
Are you leaving a space after umount command and no quotes for the external HD volume name as in:

umount /Volumes/Your External HD volume name
 
TabulaRasa said:
Are you leaving a space after umount command and no quotes for the external HD volume name as in:

umount /Volumes/Your External HD volume name
Click to expand...

I have to use quotations because the volume is Time Machine Backups and so if i dont use quotations it looks for /Volumes/Time

i added a space and now it says that the action is not permitted when it tries to unmount
 
Maybe it's because your spotlight is indexing your HDD, how much do you have on it?
 
I have the soluton!

ok, this worked for me, go to your terminal.

type in " hdiutil eject -force " (without the quotation marks)
then type in the name of what you want to eject, for example, in my case it was /volumes/external.
 
waterskier2007 said:
I have to use quotations because the volume is Time Machine Backups and so if i dont use quotations it looks for /Volumes/Time

i added a space and now it says that the action is not permitted when it tries to unmount
Click to expand...

Rather then using quotes, escape the space character by placing a preceding \ before each space (except the one after unmount)

unmount /Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups
 
Force quit finder...or use disk utility...

What I do when this happens is I will either force quit the finder, or if that doesn't work, I will open disk utility (found in Finder<Applications<utilities) and click on the specific volume, and then click 'eject' on the top. The disk utility way works every time.

Try restarting your computer too. OR....if worse comes to worse, you can shut down your computer and then take out the external HDD cord AFTER your computer is completely shut down.

Also, I've heard from a PC friend (PC people are usually very savvy on computer stuff) told me that you actually CAN take out an external HDD WITHOUT ejecting it, just so long as it is not reading or accessing data at the moment. Like if you're idling, you can pull the plug, and although a message on your mac will popup stating that data could be lost, it really doesn't mean anything. Anyway, do more research on that if you need to.

Hope this helps.
 
This happened to me last night on Snow Leopard. But it wasn't a big deal for me because I was shutting everything down anyway, so I just disconnected it once my MBP was off.
 
@applemagic123 -- this works for me, thanks. I was having the same issue, and the command line options didn't work.

applemagic123: "I will open disk utility (found in Finder<Applications<utilities) and click on the specific volume, and then click 'eject' on the top. The disk utility way works every time. "
 
r95m said:
Maybe it's because your spotlight is indexing your HDD, how much do you have on it?
Click to expand...

I believe this is likely. Run Activity Monitor and see if MDS is eating most of your processor bandwidth. If that's the case, Spotlight won't let go of your external hard drive until it's done.
 
If you log out/shutdown the drive can be safely turned off and unplugged without any problems.

Usually if a drive cannot be ejected it is due to an application, process, or file still in use with the drive. When you log out all of these will stop.

I often log out with my Time Machine drive still attached. Never had an issue.
 
r95m said:
ok, this worked for me, go to your terminal.

type in " hdiutil eject -force " (without the quotation marks)
then type in the name of what you want to eject, for example, in my case it was /volumes/external.
Click to expand...


THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!! This worked for me. I have two WD external HD's. One for photos and one for music and video. Been racking my brains out and searching everywhere for this answer.

Again, thank you!

Jim
 
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