Problems with external HD ejection in Sequoia

[designer22]

Mac Studio M1 Ultra Sequoia 15.3

Since upgrading to 15.3 that old demon has surfaced again. My WD external drives randomly refuse to eject, and that message that it’s in use by some application pops up. I do not have WD drive tools installed.

Have tried erasing/reformatting and then running First Aid, which shows no issues. So I copy the data from a backup drive, which also shows no issues. The restored drive works fine, and then doesn’t after a few days. Any of the multiple WD external drives that I use on a regular basis will suddenly refuse to eject. I have taken to doing a restart and unplugging the USB cable before the mac reboots.

Any advice/solutions would be gratefully welcomed. Thanks.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Long term bug in macOS. Disconnect, wait for macOS updates, try again. Eventually... hopefully... Apple gets around to debugging this now 5th generation macOS problem.

In the meantime, if you need the storage, seek other enclosures until you find one that works. That's the only remedy short of downgrading macOS or only using it with an older Mac running an earlier version of macOS. There's about 20 red herring remedies that get slung around regularly for this (all shifting blame away from Apple of course and some of which will basically try to blame you) but they generally only seem to do something before the problem resumes.

Blaming a drive that was fine before the upgrade is probably not the right approach. However, if you think an amazing coincidence occurred and the drive went bad right when macOS was upgraded, unhook it, connect it to an older Mac running macOS <older> or any PC with the same cable (so nothing else changes) and see if the drive is stable again. It very likely will be... which will then re-focus you on where the problem lies.

 

[designer22]

Long term bug in macOS. Disconnect, wait for macOS updates, try again. Eventually... hopefully... Apple gets around to debugging this now 5th generation macOS problem.

In the meantime, if you need the storage, seek other enclosures until you find one that works. That's the only remedy short of downgrading macOS or only using it with an older Mac running an earlier version of macOS. There's about 20 red herring remedies that get slung around regularly for this (all shifting blame away from Apple of course and some of which will basically try to blame you) but they generally only seem to do something before the problem resumes.

Blaming a drive that was fine before the upgrade is probably not the right approach. However, if you think an amazing coincidence occurred and the drive went bad right when macOS was upgraded, unhook it, connect it to an older Mac running macOS <older> or any PC with the same cable (so nothing else changes) and see if the drive is stable again. It very likely will be... which will then re-focus you on where the problem lies.

Thanks for your response. The affected drives, after unplugging them and restarting, will usually fail First Aid, with the message that the drive can’t be unmounted to run the check. If I shut down for a while and then start up, the same external drive checks out fine. Frustrating issue for sure.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

If you have an older Mac, try First Aid on it using the older Mac... though "fine" after a shut down basically tells the same story. I'd just disconnect and wait for the next point upgrade, then try again. Repeat until it is fixed... UNLESS you CAN hook it to an older Mac or any PC and the problem shows itself there too. Then you actually do have a drive/enclosure/cable issue. But my guess is it will be fine with older Mac or PC.

 

[designer22]

If you have an older Mac, try First Aid on it using the older Mac... though "fine" after a shut down basically tells the same story. I'd just disconnect and wait for the next point upgrade, then try again. Repeat until it is fixed... UNLESS you CAN hook it to an older Mac or any PC and the problem shows itself there too. Then you actually do have a drive/enclosure/cable issue. But my guess is it will be fine with older Mac or PC.

Thanks again. I will try what you suggest with a mac I have that’s a few OS versions old.

 

[HDFan]

My WD external drives randomly refuse to eject, and that message that it’s in use by some application pops up.

If an application has active file operations on a disk then it can't be ejected.

The first step is to determine which processes are using the disk.

Easily done in terminal:

sudo fs_usage -f "path to disk"
path to disk in /Volumes directory

03:39:50.521193 fstat64 F=49 0.000002 Plex Media Scanner.1577695
03:39:50.521195 read F=49 B=0x1000 0.000002 Plex Media Scanner.1577695
03:39:50.521352 close F=3 0.000004 SophosCryptoGuard.1576271

In this example stop the Plex server and if an active anti-virus scan is in process stop it.

If it is a system process then it can be more complicated.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Further to this…I suppose if you determine the offending processes that are preventing ejection you could write a script/Automator app that quits those processes and then ejects the volume.

 

[designer22]

I think I have found the culprit. I was trying to eject one of my external drives this morning, and got the dialog again. I looked at the processes and saw several Safari ones listed. I quit Safari and tried ejecting the disk and voila! Have tried this a few more times with other external drives with the same result. Quitting Safari frees up whatever processes were hanging up ejecting the drives.