MacBook Pro 10.6.8. All software/hardware up to date. Utilizing NexStar 3 exteranl HD for music samples in Pro Tools (audio application). When I quit PT, the HD will not eject properly -- I'm getting the 'disc still in use' message when ALL applications are shut down. I've connected the HD in both the eSata ports and FW with the same results. Called NexStar tech support and they were stumped.
Help?
Thx ---
JG
ProTools-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
i was having the same problem, not sure if you all got it figured out already. my external hard drive is a clone of my internal Retina Macboo Pro hard drive. everytime i would clone, then quit the cloning application, and then try to eject the external hard drive, OS X would tell me that the drive could not be ejected because something else was using it, even though there were no applications running...only the OS. after some internet research, i discovered what the problme is....Spotlight was indexing my external hard drive and wasn't allowing me to eject it. all i did was go into my System Preferences/Spotlight/Privacy, and i added my external hard drive...i told Spotlight to ignore my external hard drive. problem fixed for me.
Perfect, I have had this problem a few times and I just pulled it out and had to repair the disc. Much thanks.
@steeldragon i tried your solution but it didn't work for me. i'm using mac os 10.11.2 on a late 2013 macbook pro 15". i think all your solution did for me is make spotlight searches faster when my external HD is connect to my laptop. otherwise, i'm still having issues ejecting this particular hard drive.
This issue occurred for me when i Encrypted my external hard drive; and thanks to the above found the solution.
thanks.
Steel Dragon - THANK YOU. I am on system 10.11.13 and had a brand new hard drive, and this was making me nuts, I was unable to eject it without any programs running. As soon as I added it to the Spotlight list under "Privacy" I could eject it no problem.
Same problem here but worse, much worse.
OS: El Capitan 10.11.3
Format of external drive: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
- External drive does not eject on Macbook (bought it on 2010).
- Moving it to Spotlight's Privacy shows an error.
After some research I discovered that the process mds_stores is running for ever and this could be the problem.
My main concern is that since Spotlight's indexing has been running for ever, I cannot use Finder, since Finder cannot search the contents of the external drive.
Any help??
This just happened to me, so I stumbled upon this thread and tried logging out to no avail. It kept saying it couldn't eject due to the finder being in use... but the finder was not open at all or being used.
Logging off didn't work, but along the same thought I decided to try Restart, and once I logged back in it allowed me to eject it. ;-) Thought I would share, I am sure no one wants to reformat and lose years of data!
Hopes this works for others too 🙂.
You can fix the problem this way :
This will stop the Spotlight program :
"The Spotlight program creates a virtual index of all files and folders to speed up search on Macintosh systems."
http://www.ghacks.net/2009/08/19/spotlight-v100-and-trashes-folders-on-usb-flash -drives/
âš BE CAREFULL âš The second solution may harm your drive. Perform some search before acting. Do it at your own risk. âš BE CAREFULL âš
If this solution don't solve the ejection error, try to find the process using your External Hard Drive like this :
Sorry for my english, I hope I can help some people 🙂
Sorry for the double post, the reply was for you.. 😕 Look above ! 😉
When I connect the drive the 'mds_stores' process consumes over 100% of CPU so I assume something is wrong there.
Killing both the processes 'mds' and 'mds_stores' helped and I was able to eject the drive.
BUT my problem is that spotlight does not work with the external drive. I hoped that by ejecting and then connecting it again that issue would be fixed, however every time I connect the drive, I have to kill the processes as described above for ejecting it... and in all cases I cannot find any file on external drive when using the Spotlight or Finder's search.
The ONLY way to search through the files I have saved in the external drive is to copy them so I can perform the search in the laptop's hard disk.
Being unable to search the 1TB+ data in the external drive does not help my work at all. 😟
i was having that same problem. All i did was i went to Disk Utility found that HHD i wanted to remove and clicked on unmount. That sloved my problem. I hope this helps guys.
IT WORKED!!!!!!!! This fixed it (macbook pro 2010), external hard drive ejected immediately after stopping the mds thread. Muchas gracias
External Hard Drive not ejecting?
