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There doesn't seem to be a switch to turn off Time Machine in system preferences. I backed-up but I want to remove the drive now, and it locks up so I have to force eject. Hard to believe you can't just turn it off like you could for other MacOS iterations.
I must not be looking in the right place.
Thanks in advance for any answers.
Thanks dialabrain. I thought so, but when I did that, it still didn't want to allow me to unmount my external SSD. I started the back up earlier in the day and I'm pretty sure it was completed. You used to be able to not only uncheck the automatic back up, but also could turn Time Machine off.
I turned off TM and my CPU would constantly max out 4 of 8 bars in Activity Monitor. Spawned dozens of md_worker processes, indexing that would never finish. It was very frustrating and time consuming troubleshooting this behavior. Oddly enough I finally discovered that re-enabling auto TM (and clearing the Spotlight privacy pane) returned CPU usage to normal, CPU now 90% idle (running Firefox, Music, Logic, Arturia Analog lab, a few others). Counter-intuitive, but that's what happened. M1 iMac with Monterey.
I have the same issue with a new M1 Max MacBook Pro. Once an external hard drive is connected to Time Machine it cannot be ejected w/o a force or a reboot. I have tried waiting, unchecking auto backup, and googling (how I ended up here).
It is ridiculous that you cannot eject even after the drive has gone to sleep and spun down from inactivity. In any case... it doesn't seem to hurt anything to plug the cable out and dismiss the warning box at that point because it looks like it's just spotlightd being grabby (according to instate and Activity Monitor) but it would be nice to be able to untether my laptop from my dock safely at MY OWN initiation.
Anyone have a work-around? I have not tried killing spotlightd yet.
You turn off Time Machine by unchecking "Back up Automatically" in System Preferences > Time Machine.
Perhaps you didn't wait long enough for the Time Machine drive to eject. I just checked my iMac Pro and it does take a bit before it unmounts.
Thanks, yeah you could be right, I'll give it a try tomorrow.
You're welcome.
FWIW, I thought I would check my M1 MacBook Air in case it was a Intel vs M1 issue. I didn't even have to disable Time Machine to eject its drive. Took maybe 5 seconds to unmount.
How do you turn off time machine in Monterey
