Disk Utility--Unmount vs. Eject?

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Level 5

4,758 points

Disk Utility--Unmount vs. Eject?

What's the difference in the unmount vs. eject buttons in DU? For example, if I have a peripheral HD mounted and I want to use DU to dismount it before I disconnect, should I use unmount or eject? I kind of thought they were synonymous.

One reason I ask is that I had a little difficulty dismounting my peripheral HD the other day. I always use FW with my Iomega triple interface HD when cloning, but decided to hook it up via USB just to make a small transfer of data. The transfer worked fine, but when I tried dragging the HD icon to the trash, I kept getting messages that it could not be ejected because it was in use (it wasn't as far as I could tell). Finally I got it dismounted by using unmount a couple of times in DU. Not sure what the problem was. I had the HD connected to a powered USB hub.

Thanks,
Steve M.

iMac G4 17 inch, 1 GHz, 1 GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.4.7), Iomega triple interface 250 GB HD

Posted on Aug 12, 2006 8:19 AM

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Answer 1

macjack

Level 10

111,242 points

Aug 12, 2006 8:32 AM in response to Steve M.

To unmount a hard drive is the same as ejecting it. You can accomplish that without Disk Utility by choosing the eject icon next to the disk in Finder or dragging the disk to the trash.

USB cloning will not make a bootable backup and USB hubs can be problematic.

-mj
macjack@gmail.com

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Answer 2

Steve M. Author

Level 5

4,758 points

Aug 12, 2006 9:19 AM in response to macjack

Thanks macjack. I know that I can't clone via USB, I use FW for that purpose. I only connected via USB to transfer a very small amount of new data to the backup partition of my HD, not the bootable clone portion.

And yes, I know that you can unmount an HD by dragging its icon to the Trash, that's what I usually do. In the instance in question, with my HD connected via USB, I was getting an error message saying that the disk was in use, even though the copying operation was finished. That's why I resorted to using DU which finally got the disk unmounted.

Perhaps the problem did lie with the USB hub as you mentioned, but that's unclear. I figured I should be able to use the Iomega triple interface via the USB connection for operations not involving cloning or booting from the clone.

Thanks for responding,
Steve M.

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