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