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Upgraded to Catalina now have to always Force Eject External Drive

I have used external drives for years so as to not fill up local drive and for primary and secondary backup storage. At the end of each day in the past I would normally just eject the external drive by either right-clicking then select eject or drag drive icon to the trash. After upgrading to Catalina these options now fail to work I have to now select Force Eject in order to safely unplug the drive. In the past ten plus years I maybe had to force eject maybe half a dozen times thinking the system hung up or maybe a program had accessed a file(s) and it did not recognize the file was no longer in use. Now every single time I am done working I hesitantly have no other option than to Force Eject the external drive. I attached a second backup drive just to confirm it was not an issue with my daily use drive and that one also failed to eject normally without being forced. I saw that another community user posted a similar problem but was using their external drive for primarily storing photos in my case it's just standard work files - PDF, DOC, XLS, Etc.... Is this the only option until a patch to correct this is released or is there an app that does a better job of ejecting? I came across one app but it only added the standard eject command an menu bar button but still failed to eject without being forced.

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Oct 24, 2019 6:10 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 30, 2019 12:14 PM

Hi there, OneBigKid50!


Thanks for visiting the Apple Support Communities. I understand that you've been having some trouble ejecting external storage drives since updating to macOS Catalina. Specifically, you have found you must force eject them. I'm happy to help!


There are several reasons you may be having difficulty ejecting the drives. Use external storage devices with Mac - Apple Support suggests another app or user could be utilizing the drives. If that's not the case, I'd recommend trying the following troubleshooting. Try each step in order, testing in between to see if the issue is resolved:


  1. Quit any open apps: Quit apps on Mac - Apple Support, then restart your Mac: How to turn your Mac on or off - Apple Support.
  2. Reset the System Management Controller (SMC): How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support.
  3. See if the issue continues in safe mode: Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support.
  4. See if the issue continues in a new, test user: How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac - Apple Support.


Best!


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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 30, 2019 12:14 PM in response to OneBigKid50

Hi there, OneBigKid50!


Thanks for visiting the Apple Support Communities. I understand that you've been having some trouble ejecting external storage drives since updating to macOS Catalina. Specifically, you have found you must force eject them. I'm happy to help!


There are several reasons you may be having difficulty ejecting the drives. Use external storage devices with Mac - Apple Support suggests another app or user could be utilizing the drives. If that's not the case, I'd recommend trying the following troubleshooting. Try each step in order, testing in between to see if the issue is resolved:


  1. Quit any open apps: Quit apps on Mac - Apple Support, then restart your Mac: How to turn your Mac on or off - Apple Support.
  2. Reset the System Management Controller (SMC): How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac - Apple Support.
  3. See if the issue continues in safe mode: Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support.
  4. See if the issue continues in a new, test user: How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac - Apple Support.


Best!


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Upgraded to Catalina now have to always Force Eject External Drive

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