[wgood]

I have a number of external drives connected to my MacBook at any given time, and recently I've been having problems with them ejecting. Has anyone figured out a way to properly eject a disk without resorting to a restart? Sometimes I don't have time to restart or shut down and need to eject them immediately.

[dougster]

-Hi,

I take it the normal way is not working?, ie. dragging to the trash, click on the Finder (Dock) click on the triangle next to the external HD, or Control click on the external drive using the contexual dropdown menu to eject? None of those work?

[VK]

try ejecting them from Disk Utility.

[wgood]

I suppose I should have added that Finder gives me the "Item is in use" warning when I try any of those things. :) The reason I need/want to force eject it is because no applications are running in the Dock, therefore I can't tell what I need to stop in order to eject the disk.

[albloom]

Try launching Activity Monitor (Utilities folder) and see who is doing
what, and with which, to whom.

[dougster]

-Hi,

I've gotten the same 'Item is in Use' message. Then when I peek at Spotlight top/right corner there is a white dot in the magnifier glass, and its intexing the drives due to the clone software 'Super Duper'. So peek there for the white pulse flashing...its really tiny. If you place the cursor over the blue Spotlight it'll even say "INDEXING". Just maybe....

[rottenapple]

This isn't the right solution but it works for me for the time being. If you go into terminal and type "killall Finder" It will restart finder and abort whatever faulty copy/move/whatever process it was stuck in limbo with and should, then, let you eject without a problem.

[oddlot]

In terminal, first type:
df
this will show the device's name in a list of active volumes, e.g. /Volumes/TRAVELDRIVE

note the device's name and then type:
hdiutil eject -force /Volumes/TRAVELDRIVE
replacing "/Volumes/TRAVELDRIVE" with the name of your device

Your drive will safely eject.

~oddlot~

[wgood]

Wow, thanks oddlot, that's a great tip. I've been looking for a solution for a while.

[oddlot]

Glad to help...