OWC Releases App for Ejecting All Drives Connected to an OWC Dock with a Single Click

[MacRumors]

OWC this week announced a neat and tidy solution for quickly disconnecting multiple drives from any OWC dock, with the release of a free Dock Ejector utility.

The Mac app lives silently in your menu bar and allows you to safely eject all drives connected to your OWC dock with a single click, ensuring all data has been written before any disk is unmounted.

We've experienced a couple of occasions where drives have disconnected sluggishly from a 14-port OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock (reviewed here), one of which resulted in fragmented data, so this free app is certainly a welcome one.

We tested Dock Ejector on a multi-disk Mac workstation using the above dock - as well as the older OWC Thunderbolt 2 Dock - and found it to work well. The one-click function removes the tedium of undocking devices one at a time before you can disconnect your Mac, and the utility lets you know when it's safe to unplug the dock.

The app is compatible with all OWC docks, according to the company, including its 10-port USB-C Dock and five-port USB-C Travel Dock.

The Dock Ejector utility is compatible with Mac and Windows and can be downloaded for free from the OWC website. [Direct Link]

Article Link: OWC Releases App for Ejecting All Drives Connected to an OWC Dock with a Single Click

 

[Pakaku]

The one-click function removes the tedium of undocking devices one at a time before you can disconnect your Mac

Shift/Cmd-clicking them all in the Finder isn't too hard, is it? Undocking them one at a time just sounds painful...

Well, a free convenience app is fine by me, but it would be nice if it could eject more than just anything connected to their own docks, though.

 

[manu chao]

Shift/Cmd-clicking them all in the Finder isn't too hard, is it? Undocking them one at a time just sounds painful...

Well, a free convenience app is fine by me, but it would be nice if it could eject more than just anything connected to their own docks, though.

The (menubar) app Mountain can eject all drives. By default it combines it with putting the computer to sleep (which might be a common action with laptops) but you can create a hotkey for only ejecting all drives.

 

[69Mustang]

The (menubar) app Mountain can eject all drives. By default it combines it with putting the computer to sleep (which might be a common action with laptops) but you can create a hotkey for only ejecting all drives.

Nice. Never heard of this App. dl'ing now. Thx

 

[ikramerica]

OWC is really late to the game on this. I have a thinderbolt 1 dock by CalDigit that I got years ago and it shipped with this feature.

 

[ozarkcanoer]

Will it work with Thunderbay 4 mini ?

 

[nutmac]

The (menubar) app Mountain can eject all drives. By default it combines it with putting the computer to sleep (which might be a common action with laptops) but you can create a hotkey for only ejecting all drives.

I second the recommendation for Mountain app.

I configured Shift + Command + E to eject all external volumes and Shift + Command + S to eject all volumes and sleep. The app uses very little memory (less than 50 MB) and CPU resource (0% at idle, less than 1% in use).

 

[dsmedic10]

I used an app called UnDock and it allows for keyboard commands. It undocked everything in one command and does it in about 5 seconds. Pretty handy.

I second the recommendation for Mountain app.

I configured Shift + Command + E to eject all external volumes and Shift + Command + S to eject all volumes and sleep. The app uses very little memory (less than 50 MB) and CPU resource (0% at idle, less than 1% in use).

 

[coolfactor]

I second the recommendation for Mountain app.

I configured Shift + Command + E to eject all external volumes and Shift + Command + S to eject all volumes and sleep. The app uses very little memory (less than 50 MB) and CPU resource (0% at idle, less than 1% in use).

50MB of RAM (memory), or 50MB of disk storage? There's a difference. If a disk ejector was consuming 50MB of RAM while not doing anything and only used 0.001% of the time, I'd say that was rather wasteful.

 

[velocityg4]

What?!! I just yank the cords out!

Seriously though. There is always that one drive which won't eject. When you try to play nice and eject it the proper way.

I can see this app being handy if you have a lot of drives and disconnect them frequently.

 

[sgtaylor5]

I just tried it, and if you don't have an OWC-branded dock, it won't work.

 

[nutmac]

50MB of RAM (memory), or 50MB of disk storage? There's a difference. If a disk ejector was consuming 50MB of RAM while not doing anything and only used 0.001% of the time, I'd say that was rather wasteful.

Less than 50 MB RAM. It's currently using 39 MB at the moment. And it's not exactly doing nothing as it notifies when volumes become available or unmount, keep track of volumes, can unmount volumes if your computer goes to sleep (as well as remount as it wakes up), and allowing keyboard shortcuts for managing volumes.

 

[jtjones3]

new OWC app works great for me to eject external hard drives

 

[mrow]

Elgato also has an app for their docks that do this as well.

 

[jimthing]

OWC is really late to the game on this. I have a thinderbolt 1 dock by CalDigit that I got years ago and it shipped with this feature.

Yes, their latest TS3+ dock I've got does the same thing.

But that Mountain one looks more sophisticated, so thanks those recommendations above.
[doublepost=1550895182][/doublepost]I should add, while I like OWC a lot, their non-US distribution sucks.

Here in the UK half their stuff isn't available locally, nor in most of the rest of even Western Europe.
And the stuff that is, is often quite heavily marked up, even after adding VAT has been taken into account. :-/

 

[timidpimpin]

I like this a lot... it's actual innovation on something that's been inefficient for decades.

 

[jimthing]

I like this a lot... it's actual innovation on something that's been inefficient for decades.

It's not innovation, the thread above explains just a few ways this functionality has previously been available.

 

[ignatius345]

Or just use Alfred and type "eject all" -- works no matter who makes your drives or dock or whatever.

Alfred is basically the first thing I install on any Mac I have to deal with.

 

[jimthing]

Or just use Alfred and type "eject all" -- works no matter who makes your drives or dock or whatever.

Alfred is basically the first thing I install on any Mac I have to deal with.

What's Alfred's command for re-connecting drives (if they were never physically disconnected, so don't need plugging in again)?

 

[ignatius345]

What's Alfred's command for re-connecting drives (if they were never physically disconnected, so don't need plugging in again)?

Not sure, never needed to do that. Usually the only reason you eject a drive is so you can physically disconnect it.

What’s your point? Is re-mounting an unmounted (but connected) drive a feature of the utility in this article?

 

[jimthing]

Not sure, never needed to do that. Usually the only reason you eject a drive is so you can physically disconnect it.

What’s your point? Is re-mounting an unmounted (but connected) drive a feature of the utility in this article?

- Demounting annoying noisy drives, then later remounting them later when needed.

- Demounting noisy drives, because the controller in them fails to sleep when the host Mac is put into sleep (think studio flat owners, or people who's office is in their bedroom and need to sleep without drives waking them up).

- Demounting noisy drives, to cut resources, then remounting when needed.

etc.

If you have several drives, pulling the cables and re-attaching the cables isn't great, especially if they're not easy to get to.

 

[ignatius345]

- Demounting annoying noisy drives, then later remounting them later when needed.

- Demounting noisy drives, because the controller in them fails to sleep when the host Mac is put into sleep (think studio flat owners, or people who's office is in their bedroom and need to sleep without drives waking them up).

- Demounting noisy drives, to cut resources, then remounting when needed.

etc.

If you have several drives, pulling the cables and re-attaching the cables isn't great, especially if they're not easy to get to.

Cool. I mentioned Alfred because the feature of this utility listed in the article was "eject a bunch of drives simultaneously" and Alfred does that quite easily.

 

[jimthing]

Cool. I mentioned Alfred because the feature of this utility listed in the article was "eject a bunch of drives simultaneously" and Alfred does that quite easily.

I did a quick search online, and found this:
https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/1248-mount-network-shares-with-automatic-discovery

As a non-Alfred user (at least yet, haha – may try it when I get some time), I dunno if the link above is the only best or only way of doing this, but I've added it here for others who might read this thread.

 

[ignatius345]

I did a quick search online, and found this:
https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/1248-mount-network-shares-with-automatic-discovery

As a non-Alfred user (at least yet, haha – may try it when I get some time), I dunno if the link above is the only best or only way of doing this, but I've added it here for others who might read this thread.

Interesting! That post is from 2013, so I do wonder if there are more up to date Alfred workflows out there. One great thing it does is launch any script you want to load into it, so anything you can build with AppleScript or Automator would be runnable in Alfred with a quick keyword.

 

[jimthing]

Interesting! That post is from 2013, so I do wonder if there are more up to date Alfred workflows out there.

Actually the last post was "Posted October 3, 2017".

One great thing it does is launch any script you want to load into it, so anything you can build with AppleScript or Automator would be runnable in Alfred with a quick keyword.

Looks useful.