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myuserid08

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 15, 2008
358
9
Anyone else unable to eject their USB drive after creating a Big Sur USB installer ?

Tried 3 different macs including one running Big Sur. All refuse to eject the USB - only way is to force eject.

"The disk "Install mac OS Big Sur" wasn't ejected because one or more programs may be using it."

Everything is closed. I can't figure out what could be accessing the drive after install ?
 
Yes. I am figuring the same problem. If I force ejection the usb drive is corrupted and is unable to do a fresh Big Sur install.
 
Did you create the drive using createinstallmedia, or a different way? The former has always worked for me.
 
I agree that the best way is to shutdown, but you could try quitting Finder and also make sure Terminal is not still open for some reason. If it is type exit and hit return.
 
I make (or redo) Big Sur bootable installers a couple of times a week, and always have to force-eject that bootable partition. I don't know the reason. But, it never affects the result - a working, bootable installer for Big Sur.
I use the same createinstallmedia command in terminal for High Sierra and above, and Big Sur installer is the only system that always gets a force-eject that first eject. Doesn't affect that installer, however.
 
Have you tried running lsof to see if you can identify the process that has the device open?
 
createinstallmedia forgets to eject two disk images named "Shared Support".
"diskutil list" will show the connected/mounted disks and disk images.
"diskutil eject diskX" will eject the image.
afterwards "Install macOS Big Sur⁩" can be ejected properly.
 
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On a (probably) unrelated note - does anyone have an idea what the other createinstallmedia command does in the Big Sur installer? It is named "createinstallmedia_yosemite", and is also in the Resources folder, with the other "createinstallmedia" command.
 
Hi guys. I am doing a new usb installer now.

I used this command in Terminal:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Big\ Sur.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

At the end I will post the results.

Thanks.
 
Bootable disk ok.
Captura de Tela 2021-05-07 às 09.58.14.png


Ejecting the usb disk:
Captura de Tela 2021-05-07 às 09.59.44.png


Captura de Tela 2021-05-07 às 10.01.08.png


Found these two shared support disks, ejected them. Then was able to eject usb drive.
Captura de Tela 2021-05-07 às 10.01.44.png


I will try to do a fresh Big Sur install from the usb drive and will post results here.
 
Well, end of history.
IMG_2495.JPG


When I started to do a fresh install, again, I got message that my usb boot drive was damaged.
As I erase my HD I did a recover from Time Machine and, at the end restore Hanged up my Mac.
So... I tried again to install Big Sur from usb. When I erased my HD again I noted that my container disk was in one format and the partition in other format. I let all with the same format. The fresh installation went well and... voilá
...
Captura de Tela 2021-05-07 às 14.54.11.png


Now I have a fresh Big Sur in my Mac.

I hope this help somebody.

Thanks all.
 
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