External Drive "in use" by finder and won't eject

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Level 1

15 points

External Drive "in use" by finder and won't eject

I just bought a new iMac, replacing my 2014 model. I have been using a G-Drive external drive to hold my photos on my old computer with no problem. It ejected when I wanted it to. On the new iMac, the drive won't eject. It says the Finder is using it. An old community post from Apple has some suggested fixes. Relaunching the finder does not work and I cannot use first aid on the G-Drive because First-Aid cannot unmount the drive, even if I reboot an;d try immediately. The ony thing that works is to turn off the computer and unattach the GDrive. There must be some way to do this. I did First Aid on my old iMac, but it didn't solve the problem.

Posted on Nov 13, 2024 3:33 PM

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Answer 1

HWTech

Level 9

60,518 points

Nov 20, 2024 5:52 PM in response to skaus

Here is what you can do to identify what is accessing the drive. Use the following command within the Terminal app, making sure to replace "<path-to-volume>" with the actual path to the volume that is not able to be unmounted.

sudo  lsof  <path-to-volume>

The easiest way to get the full path is by first typing the first part of the command making sure to leave at least one space after the "f ", then drag & drop the volume from the Finder onto the open Terminal window which will autofill the correct path which is extremely important if any spaces are in the path or file name.

The command will prompt you for your admin password. Nothing will appear on the screen as you type, so press the "Return" key to submit the password.

You will be shown a list of processes which are accessing the volume. Get the PID number of the process(es), then use the following command to quit that process....make sure to replace "<PID>" in the command with the actual PID number listed:

sudo  pkill  <PID>

I just had to do this for my external drive which Spotlight was indexing and would not release the drive.

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