External Hard Drive not ejecting?

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. 😟

Thanks blue44! Disk Utility pointed out what app was actually using my drive. In my case it was QuickTime player (some background process) so I started it, closed it again, and the drive was cured! Unmounted in a second! Thank you for a clue, Disk Utility gives you a detailed message when it comes to unmounting the drive or an error with it 🙂

The Spotlight option didn't work for me as it said their is an error and I can't add it. No force quit option. And Disk Utility also said not possible while in use.

But what helped is to go to "force quit" and just restart Finder.

After that it still gave the message of being in use but now the ability of force quit appeared and I was able to force quit it.

I am having the same issue as well... did you ever find a solution?

Thanks so much (Steel Dragon)! I've been driven mad by an external hard drive that wouldn't eject. I did as you suggested and now it works perfectly.

I solved the same problem in this manner. Thank you so much!

Thank you so much — problem solved for me finally (after years) with different external hard drives! ;—))

Perfect, I have had this problem a few times and I just pulled it out and had to repair the disc. Much thanks.

This issue occurred for me when i Encrypted my external hard drive; and thanks to the above found the solution.

thanks.

Sorry for the double post, the reply was for you.. 😕 Look above ! 😉

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.