Can't eject external hard drive
 

Hi all.
This is my first post, so please excuse me if I do something wrong (and excuse my english: it's not my mother tongue)
I have a problem with a LaCie d2 triple interface 160GB disk, connected by firewire, but I'm not sure weather the problem comes from the disk or from the OS (I'm a new switcher).
After having copied large amount of data to the external hard drive (for example, after a complete backup, regardless from the soft I use for beckup) it becomes impossible to eject/dismount it. The error message is "Could not eject volume" and I am told that the drive is busy and that I have to check if there are files in use. There are no files in use from the drive, I quit evrithing, but it OS X still complain that the disk is "busy". Actualy, it is! The blue light keeps flashing quickly, and I hear the typical noise of an hard disk working, but no file from the disk and no program are in use. The only solution is to shut down the system. I repeared permissions, but still got the problem. I checked the firmware but it didn't need to be upgraded. After I restart, everything works fine untill I intensively use that disk again. For small amount of copy, it works fine.
I don't know if it's a disk problem or an OS problem or anything else. I could not find any reference to such a problem in any forum I visited. Can anyone help?
My system:
iMac G4 1Ghz, 15", combo drive
1 GB Ram
Motu 828 mkII on the second Firewire port
Thanks all

It sounds like it might simply be that the copying is not yet finished.
How long have you waited after starting the copying of data?
How much data (in gigabytes) are you copying?
How long does the drive continue to be active (light & sound) if you just leave it alone after the copy?

I don't know what that device is, but it would be a good idea to disconnect all other external devices while you are troubleshooting this problem.

When I've gotten the "busy" message, I've found in one case that a script I duplicated to another drive was active. On a couple occasions, the problem was with Microsoft's Office X (or later Office 2004) Entourage. Not a problem within Office or Entourage per se. The solution was to turn "off" Office Notifications from within Entourage X or Entourage 2004.

Respectfully, Norm

Tanks

Buckup is finished (it took around an hour or so) and all the copied files seems to be there and perfectly usable
20GB of data copied
after 20 minutes (i mean after the backup is finished) i decided it was not normal and restarted
Motu 828 is a firewire external sound card. I'll disconnect, just in case.

Interesting. I don't have Office and don't know Entourage, but your answer make me wonder: something running in the bacKground waiting for an action or en event to respond? That can be anything, like a scheduler, for instance...hmmmm. Don't know; everithing was closed, nothing running. Thank you anyway.

You can use "Activity Monitor" (under the Utilities folder) to see what processes are running.

The following command (enter it in a Terminal window) will show you what files are being accessed by which programs
(you will be prompted for your password)

sudo fs_usage

(Type Control-C to stop the fs_usage command.)

The following command will show you which files are currently open and by which programs:

sudo lsof

If you figure this out,, be sure to post back here to tell us for the benefit of future readers who might have the same problem.

I've had the exact same problem on some USB flash drives I use to transfer files, and with some Zip disks, It's a tad annoying...

But my problem isn't near as big, as these are only for transfer rather than backup...

Tank you for the advice. Tonight I tried a duplication of the hard disk with Retrospect; it was slow (more than 3 hours) and I went to sleep. This morning everything was ok and I could eject the target disk: I'ts the first time I use retrospect (demo) and I think I'll buy it.
Now, maybe the buckup procedure was more accurate with retrospect than with others backup soft, or maybe during the night the target disk had enough time to be bored and go to sleep as well ;) .
Anyway, I'll be back if I have the problem again, just to inform everybody about the result of those commands you suggested.

Tank you all and bye

That's good news, indeed. Antoanto.

I'm glad that Retrospect's "Duplicate" feature worked well for you.

I found one way to speed up the process. I'm using Retrospect 6.0.204 and just before I run Retrospect "Duplicate," i disable my Norton AntiVirus program. i stick a PostIt note (a yellow sticky) on my monitor to remind me to re-enable the antivirus when duplication has finished.

Respectfully, Norm

Hi, I've just got to this page with google, and have the same problem with ejecting external drives. It happens with different drives, and also when I mount my computer in target mode. I've been looking at the activity monitor, but don't see anything that rings a bell. I've tried putting the computer to sleep, and leaving the drive alone for a long period of time. the external disk busy lamp doesn't show any access to the drive either.

any suggestions?

Zeroed disk won't mount or unmount.
 

I've had a similar problem and discovered after reading either system.log or console.log in Console that in my case it was "daemonic-anacron" in my "/System/Library/StartUpItems/" running cron pointing to a non-existent "/sw/sbin/anacron" installed somewhere along the line when I was using Fink / X11.
I had created a symlink and moved "sw" to a partition on my external drive (120GB LaCie d2) but after it crashed only 3 out of 7 partitions would mount and that one wasn't one of them. I was unable to erase or partition the drive until I tracked this down and installed Cronnix to temporarily turn it off.

Thanks to all those who posted for the helpful ideas I received reading the following threads:

Volume fails to unmount...
Force dismount a stuck volume.
Cronaid, Macaroni, MacJanitor, Cache Out X, etc.


However…

After an erase and partitioning (into 4 disks) it worked briefly and failed again. One partition/disk icon lost its’ name, turned into a generic document icon in Disk Utility, and I could not dismount the main disk. I turned the power off and disconnected it about a week ago. No point in trying to shut down the computer (iBook - dual USB) because it won’t do that either, that’s how the problem started three weeks ago when I started a shutdown/restart to clear the decks to upgrade to 10.3.6 via Software Update.
Today I re-installed 10.3.6.from the CombiUpDater and then reconnected the external drive. The Finder wouldn’t recognize it and offered to initialize the disk. This I did and the drive showed up in Disk Utility. I erased it with the zero disk option set and that took about 5 hours but it seemed to work. When it was done it still wouldn’t mount or dismount.
Right now I’m stumped because I’ve tried everything mentioned in the above threads/posts with the exceptions of resetting the PMU and buy/try DiskWarrior. I’ll try reset next and check back for any suggestions, which I would really appreciate.

Re: Can't eject external harddrive.
 

Just a note to finish this off,for anyone who reads this thread this far since I left my last post hanging unfinished.

Nothing worked so I tried booting in OS 9 and I got the "flashing question mark" at startup. Oh no! - well I bought Disk Warrior and it saved the day! The drive was still under warranty so I took it back to the dealer and LaCie replaced/upgraded it with a 160GB drive. Thanks LaCie…, but there was no explanation for the problem, so it remains a mystery.

How I fix this issue
 

I am using a 500GB LaCie d2 drive (Filesystem is Mac OS Extended by default) with my MBP and often have this problem.

First things first, I use lsof to find out what file is open. Now this is a bit of a funny one. I tend to find sometimes lsof tells me there is no open file and other times it points me to the suspect file, which I might add is always the same!

Empty your trash!! That's the problem I always have.

Hope this fixed your problems as it did mine.

Regards,
James

I also had this problem. It turns out it was my Norton Antivirus AutoProtect. After I turned AutoProtect off, the disk activity on my external drive stopped. I think I'll just leave it off for now. I only have this Antivirus program because it's free, but it seems like it's not worth installing.

Put external HD in Spotlight Privacy and modify virus disk setting
 

1. Unless the external hard drive volume is put in System Preferences/Spotlight/Privacy, the Spotlight indexing process could easily prevent the unmounting of that volume.

2. Unless one inserts disks or drives from an untrusted source, the precise antivirus preference setting I choose in Norton Antivirus 11 is as follows:
--Launch NAV
--Unlock
--Click on the Automatic Protection icon
--Leave Auto-Protect in the "on" setting, but click on the "Configure" button
--Click on the "Auto Disk Scan" button and click on the "Off" button

The default setting for Auto Disk Scan is "On." That was one of the very first default preferences I changed after installing NAV 11.

If one wishes to scan disks, I noticed that one can also select which kinds of inserted disks to scan, such as "music," "data," "iPod" etc.

Respectfully, Norm

Attempting to force eject
 

If you've stopped anti-virus software, Spotlight isn't indexing your drive and listing open files returns nothing you can attempt to force an eject using diskutil in Terminal.

You can reference a device using any of the following:

• The device node entry. Any entry of the form of /dev/disk*, e.g. /dev/disk2.
  
• The disk identifier. Any entry of the form of disk*, e.g. disk1s9.
  
• The volume mount point. Any entry of the form of /Volumes/*, e.g. /Volumes/Untitled.
  
• The Universally Unique Identifier or UUID. Any entry of the form of e.g. 11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555.

You can get a device's node entry using the df command. The disk identifier is the bit after /dev/ in a volume's node entry.

The volume mount point can be found out using df, by selecting a drive in Disk Utility or by looking in your /Volumes folder, which isn't displayed by default in Finder.

I think you have a firewire connection problem. Try using just USB.

I had a problem very similar to yours with an external Seagate USB-Firewire drive, and when I put the topic to the forums, most answers suggested a firewire cable issue, try a new cable, swap cable connector ends, try a different FW port, etc; or a bad sector on the external hard drive. Nothing seemed to fix it so I reverted to using USB only. It works fine. Good luck!

that is usually my problem too, but sometimes you have to force quit finder. to do this, click on the apple at the top left of the screen or hit command+option+esc. after that ejecting the volume works fine.

I have a LaCie external harddrive on my Mac OS X and I've had problems shutting it down. I read through the above posts and it was the last comment. i.e. relaunching finder (via the force quit finder option) which did the trick. Thanks a million.

shut down then unplug computer!
 

Gee, I hope you haven't still had your problem after 4 years! I found this page after googling "can't eject backup drive" and tried ALL your hints, to no avail. Checked a couple of other sites and finally came upon this on a Yahoo page: Shut down your computer then UNPLUG it. Try again.

Simple solution and worth a try. I did and it WORKED! -

Can't eject external drive Firewire OR USB
 

I find that if I just wait a while, whatever is in "USE" preventing the ejection, completes and stops and the drive ejects with Command+ "E".
(Intel Duo 2 20" iMac 2.4 GhZ)

Shutting down the computer is not always an option...

Here's what I do when I have this problem:
http://www.alecjacobson.com/weblog/?p=649
If <code>lsof</code> hangs its because files are waiting on disk so you might have to check <code>top</code>

Thank you; I'm doing an "Archive and Install"; couldn't find my imac g5 install disk 1, it's out of warranty, and can't find Leopard install disks I first used. I stuck my install disk 2 in there (wishful thinking) and wondered how would I do an install when someone lent me a Snow Leopard...? And my wireless keyboard stopped working...thanks.

The left mouse button on reboot worked and I could hear the g5 ready to spit it out! ha!

Snow Leopard will not work on an iMac G5. The "G5" processor is in the PPC family from IBM and Motorola/Freescale. Snow Leopard requires an Intel processor.

You need to get the right install disc for your iMac G5. Retail Install discs from after your computer was made will work, or your original discs that shipped with this iMac.

Trevor

Cant eject external hard drive
 

I need some help in accessing data from my external hard drive.

I have an iomega external hard drive with 500 Gig space. I was using it to save my files. I used to log in Windows XP and copy many files for the last three months. Then I copied a folder from Ubuntu on to that external hard drive. It looks like the file system on the external hard drive is messed up when Ubuntu tried to copy a folder to it. Now I am not able to read the contents of the external hard drive either from Windows XP SP2 or from Ubuntu 6.06 . Both Windows XP and Ubuntu are able to detect the external hard drive, though. Windows is forcing me to format the external hard drive, maybe because it is not able to detect the file system.

I am not able to see the files on the external hard drive from Ubuntu either. From Ubuntu computer file browser window, the external hard drive does not appear. I was able to successfully read the external drive from Ubuntu also about ten days back. Ten days back, when I accessed the external hard drive successfully, I copied a folder from Ubuntu local hard drive to the external hard drive. Maybe that was a mistake. I am surprised to even think that Ubuntu can mess up the existing file system like ntfs or fat on the external hard drive.

How can I recover the data stored in the external hard drive? Would this be the right forum to ask for help on recovering files from external hard drive? The iomega support person is not able to help me. The external drive is still in warranty.

Thanks and regards,

What filesystem is used on this hard drive? Where was it originally formatted?

Trevor

I run into this sometimes with my drives and sometimes spotlight is the culprit even when the icon on the top right of your screen doesn't show it's indexing.

"mds" is the culprit for this and usually when this pops up it will also be hogging the hell out of your cpu if you check activity monitor. It was using 100% of one my cores.

you can kill this little bastard with some success. I usually use the extreme killing method of:

Replace PID with the process ID of mds. You will see this in activity monitor in the left column. If not, use the "top" command in terminal and you will see mds and it's PID. You don't have to put -9 flag but it doesn't usually work without it, at least on my machine.

I know this has been mentioned before elsewhere but didn't see it here and figured I'd post it since I literally just had to do this 5 minutes ago to get my firewire drive to eject.

Hope it helps someone.

Found this thread because i could not unmount 1T hard drive after carbon copy cloner backup.

used useful terminal idea from hayne above
sudo fs_usage
(Type Control-C to stop the fs_usage command.)
The following command will show you which files are currently open and by which programs:
sudo lsof
If you figure this out,, be sure to post back here to tell us for the benefit of future readers who might have the same problem.
++
Found that indeed Norton scanner was still trying to scan despite not being visible in any windows or showing as active.
***I disabled Autoprotect on the norton menu drop down and the drive stopped working and then i could dismount it....
I suppose i could have just stopped norton as well in acivity monitor but i didnt know that was the problem...

15:21:42 open 95-e5257-aXuOW1/1001DBA3.xml 0.000016 NortonAutoPr
15:21:42 read 0.000007 NortonAutoPr
15:21:42 lseek 0.000003 NortonAutoPr
15:21:42 close 0.000007 NortonAutoPr
15:21:42 close 0.000010 NortonAutoPr
15:21:42 lstat 95-e5257-aXuOW1/1001DBA3.xml 0.000007 NortonAutoPr
15:21:42 unlink 95-e5257-aXuOW1/1001DBA3.xml 0.000162 NortonAutoPr
15:21:42 read 0.000373 W mds
15:21:42 access 95-e5257-aXuOW1/1001DBA5.xml 0.000008 NortonAutoPr
15:21:42 open 95-e5257-aXuOW1/1001DBA5.xml 0.000166 NortonAutoPr