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I've got a USB bus in the USB port on my Mini. I plug in an external drive for BUs. I also plug in a thumb drive for BUs. It all used to work. I upgraded to Sequoia a few days ago. Now the drives won't eject because something is using them. Tried logging out, powering down, etc. Nothing works except force eject. Has Apple got a bug?
Mac mini, macOS 15.1
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:
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
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:
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
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.
Give etrecheck Full Disk Access before running.
Thanks for Old Toad’s etrecheck instructions…
Slow iMac 2017 - Apple Community
Problem solved! I right click erased the USB drive and it ejected. I copied the data back to it from mini and it ejected. That also fixed the original problem with the external USB HD I was backing up to using CCC (after upgrading to V7). CCC erased the HD before backing up. Interestingly Disk Doctor wouldn't unmount the thumb drive to erase it. But using Finder worked.
The right click / erase method seems to work, however if someone can't temporarily lose the external drive data then it's not a viable solution. Presumably Apple is aware by now of the problem and will have a patch in the next point release.
Old Toad’s etrecheck instructions…
I just bought my new Mac Mini M4 and upgraded to latest Sequoia 15.1.1. I have two Samsung Extreme SSDs:
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.
Open Activity Monitor in Utilities, View>All Processes, sort on Name, see if fsck is running, if so force quit it.
fsck not running
This is new Mini, few months old.
More information. I had to upgrade Carbon Copy Cloner to V7 to ensure compatibility with Sequoia. After upgrade I did my usual BU and the HD ejected properly. So must be something with the new CCC fixed the drive.
The thumb drive still does not eject properly. Wondering if formatting the thumbdrive with the new OS will fix it?
Same here, both drives formatted APFS, new computer, I did a completely fresh install without transferring over from old computer. Yesterday after noticing my Samsung Extreme 1TB & 2TB SSDs were not indexing, I forced a Spotlight indexing. At the end of the workday, the 1TB ejected properly for first time. Not sure what was done different other then Spotlight indexing which is opposite scenario to others. However that was once and I'd like to check again to make sure this is repeatable.
Yesterday I reported this eject issue to Apple Feedback as well.
Is this new Mini or an older version?
More info.
Disk Utility can't unmount the thumb drive to do anything to it.
Reported to Apple/feedback
I can read/write to thumb drive. Data seems fine. Just can't eject without forcing it
Etrecheck showed no major or minor problems. Where do I post the report?
BTW, TM is only backing up intermittently since Sequoia install. Set to do it daily. Any ideas about that?
Might report via www.apple.com/feedback.
Can't eject USB drive after Sequoia upgrade
