Can't eject USB drive after Sequoia upgrade

It's not just you! I'm running Sequoia 15.1.1 on a MacBook Air M3 15" and ALL external USB drives fail to eject and therefore require Force Eject:

• USB-C drives
• USB-A drives plugged in using Apple's $25 USB-A to USB-C adapter dongle
• All drives formatted APFS

FSCK is not running. I've killed the Spotlight indexer but that hasn't helped.

Sometimes restarting the Mac will allow me to eject the drive in the first moments after restarting, so clearly something is kicking in early in the boot process which is preventing the drive from being ejected safely.

This is a new Mac purchased within the last few weeks and set up from scratch - that is, I didn't restore from a backup of any sort.

Every autumn brings a new version of MacOS and every autumn weird bugs such as this crop up. Clearly Apple's attention is focused elsewhere. It worries me that such basic things are being broken every year. After 40 years of MacOS, you'd think such basic features/functions would be protected from being broken by ongoing OS development: Apple excels in so many ways, yet the fact they can't protect their own OS from this sort of bugginess is more than a little worrying.

I've used the FeedBack Assistant to submit a bug report. Perhaps you can too. It won't be fixed if we keep it quiet: the squeaky hinge gets the oil! You can find official bug reporting details here.

All the best!

Peter

I may have found a solution that doesn't involve erasing the drive.

Settings > Spotlight > Search Privacy > + add the external drive the exclusion list

This worked for me, but you need to manually add all external drives that you use.

I was so 'happy' to see that I was not alone in fighting this. I tried what was suggested and got a "Privacy List Error - The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error" message. The search continues!

Yes, same here, have to reboot Mac in order to eject external pen-drives, physical drives or SSD drives. At least this bug has no prejudice! Also this reminds me when I tried to run Windows 3.0 using 9 floppy disks back in the day.

Just to reinforce that for those who are facing this problem, please run lsof:

1) On your Mac, press the Command-Space keys to open the Spotlight search

2) Type Terminal.app and press return. It will open the Terminal window

3) Type:

sudo lsof "/Volumes/your_external_drive_name"

It will show who is holding your drive. Big chance you will see mds and mds_store.

So this might be a macOS bug. If not, then investigate the listed apps.

Good luck!

Holy cow, this worked IMMEDIATELY! Adrianhong, thanks for this info. I never would have thought of this.

I just bought my new Mac Mini M4 and upgraded to latest Sequoia 15.1.1. I have two Samsung Extreme SSDs:

• the Samsung Extreme 1TB SSD won't eject due to "being in use" and I have to go to the extent of shutting down the computer to eject it
• the other Samsung Extreme 2TB SSD will eject without issues

Both are plugged into the Thunderbolt ports at the back but I also had the same issue when they were plugged into the USB-C ports at the front.

I hope Apple addresses this issue as it seems to be popping up for several people.

Just to add to this, but please be aware I'm not sure yet: I use Backblaze (online backup solution). Since people here are mentioning CCC, Backblaze may be preventing drives from ejecting. In early versions, I could manage to quit the app. Nowadays it would not, so I can't ensure it is the responsible.

Another thing to consider: mds_stores keep popping in Activity Monitor with 90% cpu. People say that it is an indexer, so it might be indexing external disks, and therefore locking the drives.

Anyways, any of that was happening before. And since I am a video producer, I deal with external drives everyday, this is very annoying. In order to prevent from any disk corruption, I never Force-Eject anything. I always have to reboot macOS in order to eject a drive. Go figure...

Today I reformatted an older WD My Passport to AFPS and backed up files. When trying to eject, it gave me the typical response (being used by something). When trying to index it via Spotlight, I ended up getting the error "Privacy List Error - This item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error". Only way I will be able to eject it safely is shutting my Mac down and disconnecting.

Mac Mini M4

OS 15.1.1

Here is the solution :

Have the drive mounted and visible.

Open System Settings > Spotlight > Search Privacy... (you'll need this in a moment keep it visible).

Open Activity Monitor, find mds_stores (use the search function in Activity Monitor), click on mds_stores.

Click on the X button at the top of the Activity Monitor window, select Force Quit (this is safe to do).

Now quickly drag the external drive into the Spotlight > Search Privacy... area. The drive should now appear in the list (of excluded devices). Click done. Close System Settings. If the drive wasn't allowed to be dragged in, try again, mds_stores may be still quitting. Try again, it will work.

If your external drive doesn't now eject, do a force eject (or shut down your Mac). The next time you mount the drive it will be excluded from Spotlight and will eject.

Happy days.

Same is happening to me. I'm not using back blaze or CCC. It's Sequoia that is causing the issues. I had no problems before I updated to Sequioa 15.1.1.

I agree with wagnercs. All my drives and San Disk Flash USB sticks worked fine before I upgraded to Sequoia 15.1.1 and later Sequoia 15.2. Now something is supposed to be using them, so they would not eject. It has to be a bug in Sequoia.

adrianhong's Spotlight solution worked for me - thank you for sharing this.

It al boils down to the quality of the UBC-C cables you use, my friend. USB-C connections are solid as a rock if the cable is of high quality and properly inserted tightly into the USB-C port at both ends.

Two other things that can keep it from ejecting are Spotlight & Time Machine.

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info. Give it Full Disk Access.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Give etrecheck Full Disk Access before running.

Thanks for Old Toad’s etrecheck instructions…

Slow iMac 2017 - Apple Community

Open Activity Monitor in Utilities, View>All Processes, sort on Name, see if fsck is running, if so force quit it.