Cannot Unmount or Eject Time Machine Volume?

Question

Cannot Unmount or Eject Time Machine Volume?

This appears to be a bug. After you select an external drive for use as a Time Machine volume, the drive can no longer be unmounted or ejected. This is even true after you turn the volume back into a normal drive.

Solution: Set Time Machine's backup disk to "None", and then either reboot, or just yank the drive if you're in a hurry (not recommended). When you come back up, the drive should be unmountable.

Yes, I realize that you can always manually "unmount" the drive by yanking the cable, but if you need to get in there with Disk Utility to repair or partition the drive, you'll be unable to, unless you go through the solution discussed above.

12" PowerBook G4 and Core Duo Mac Mini, Mac OS X (10.5), Airport Express, iPod nano (1G), LaCie Mini 500 GB

Posted on Nov 11, 2007 6:20 AM

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Answer 1

BobP1776

Level 3

698 points

Nov 11, 2007 7:33 AM in response to Daniel Todd Currie

I "eject" my Time Machine firewire external disk regularly without any problems.

On my system, there is no issue with this. You don't even have to "turn off" Time Machine first. Time Machine knows the disk is gone and does the right thing when the disk is reconnected.

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Answer 2

itsafire

Level 1

13 points

Nov 19, 2007 1:19 AM in response to Daniel Todd Currie

Same here this morning. Had to hard turn off the drive.

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Answer 3

Nov 22, 2007 1:51 PM in response to Daniel Todd Currie

The same with me (G5 2x2). It is not possible to unmount or eject the volume. Only the hard way to cancel the USB connection. The repair of the disk permissions or to turn TM off has no effect on my machine.

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Answer 4

Nov 28, 2007 7:09 PM in response to Daniel Todd Currie

I have the same problem with a usb drive on my MacBook. I found that using Disk Utility to unmount the drive worked.

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Answer 5

efurst

Level 1

0 points

Dec 5, 2007 4:20 AM in response to Daniel Todd Currie

I am having the same problem. Firewire drive does not unmount from finder. Disk utility can unmount it, though.

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Answer 6

efurst

Level 1

0 points

Dec 5, 2007 5:23 AM in response to Daniel Todd Currie

This may be a Finder problem? I could not eject a disk image this morning after posting the last message. Relaunching Finder seemed to fix it.

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Answer 7

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Dec 5, 2007 5:42 AM in response to efurst

I've been seeing problems ejecting disk volumes, some were even just .dmg and I would say it is related to problems Leopard first showed in 10.5.0 with trouble even mounting volumes, and probably underlying code that really needs to be addressed in future updates and disk arbitration.

I was afraid that a shutdown or restart would hang and wanted to insure that all volumes were unmounted cleanly first. Very annoying. But not related to Time Machine (only).

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Answer 8

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

Dec 5, 2007 8:06 AM in response to Daniel Todd Currie

Daniel Todd Currie wrote:
This appears to be a bug. After you select an external drive for use as a Time Machine volume, the drive can no longer be unmounted or ejected. This is even true after you turn the volume back into a normal drive.

Not a bug.
I eject my TM drive on occasion. I just drag it into the "Trash" bin and it ejects. No problem at all.
What message are you getting when you attempt to eject it?

Message was edited by: nerowolfe

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Answer 9

Searles

Level 1

0 points

Dec 17, 2007 3:32 PM in response to Daniel Todd Currie

For me in most cases it is possible to unmount the drive via the Terminal's umount without complaints (of course sometimes you get "Drive is busy") although the Finder's unmount did not show any reaction, so it seems that the Finder simply ignores the command sometimes.

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Answer 10

balla642

Level 1

0 points

Dec 24, 2007 2:48 PM in response to nerowolfe

i am having the same problem, finder just disappears. I have used the suggestion of unmounting it from disk utility which works, i have not yet used the "drag to trash" suggestion... i think this is a finder problem...

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Answer 11

sabrinus

Level 1

10 points

Dec 26, 2007 10:46 AM in response to Searles

Since upgrading to Leopard, I can only unmount disk image volumes via Disk Utility. Dragging to trash does not work. Annoying....

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Answer 12

dwmreg64

Level 1

36 points

Dec 27, 2007 6:47 AM in response to sabrinus

This appears to be Yet Another Leopard Bug or YALB. Leopard is still my worst upgrade since buying a Mac again in 2003.

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Answer 13

Jan 6, 2008 8:43 AM in response to dwmreg64

I'm having the same problem. When I try to eject my external storage disk, I get a message that the disk is in use, even when I have time machine turned off. I can't do it from disk utility either.

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Answer 14

Jan 14, 2008 8:37 AM in response to Daniel Todd Currie

I am having this issue too. I can't unmount or eject as normal or even through Disc Utility. I get the error message that an application is using the volume which is not true.

I verified the disc permissions [if that's possible helpful at all] and all seems fine with the volume.

I'm forced to manually pull out the firewire cable each time I need to move the laptop.

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Answer 15

Jan 17, 2008 4:11 PM in response to macbook610

I'm in the same boat. When the TM volume is running, it will not stop and will not eject. It also never stops running once it gets going. It's also keeping my machine from shutting down properly (I have to kill the power or yank the drive cable).

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