macOS 27.0.1 processes prevent external drives from ejecting

I have this issue as well. I've been using the AI's to help mitigate the issue a bit.

1. Disabling Finder Icon Previews can help
2. Adding drives or folders to Search Privacy in Spotlight
3. Adding a 'don't index' metadata tag via Terminal:

touch "/Volumes/YOUR_DRIVE/.metadata_never_index"

and finally 4. I created a function called 'eject' that disables process and puts the drive to sleep, then ejects them.

eject() {
  sudo kill -9 $(lsof -t "$1") 2>/dev/null
  sleep 1
  diskutil eject "$1"
}

you do 'nano ~/.zshrc' in Terminal

and that lets you edit whatever zshrc is, and you paste the above code in. Then save and exit.

Now in terminal you can type 'eject <drag and drop the drive here>' and that ejects it safely. That's the workaround for now. It's pants but it works. Just be careful with – I appreciate I'm a random online suggesting you edit files with terminal! Do what due diligence you need to verify the code 🤓

EDIT: Also this is a problem in Mac OS Tahoe as well, I'm on 26.7.2 and it's been a problem for the past 2-3 updates as well. Submitted an Apple Feedback thing a while back about it