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Can't eject drives as normal

Sirious

Sirious

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 2, 2013
1,674
2,908
United Kingdom, London
Hey all,

I'm having an issue with Catalina and using USB flash drives.

When I have finished my work, I quit all apps and go to eject it as normal (drag to Bin etc) and usually this works. However since updating to Catalina, I am being FORCED to click 'Force Eject' because apparently an app is still using it - not true because ALL apps are closed!

The latest update didn't fix this either...

Anyone else having the same issue or know a solution?

Thanks
 
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Any background app doing a scan or looking to upload to a cloud server?
If you look in Activity Monitor, click on the tab for Disk and see if anything stands out.
 
Whilst no application may visibly be open, a background process could still be clinging to the drive.
There's a command called lsof. Stands for "List open files". You can use it too... Well, list open files and processes holding the files. If you give it a path it'll only show relevant info for that path.
 
Sirious said:
Hey all,

I'm having an issue with Catalina and using USB flash drives.

When I have finished my work, I quit all apps and go to eject it as normal (drag to Bin etc) and usually this works. However since updating to Catalina, I am being FORCED to click 'Force Eject' because apparently an app is still using it - not true because ALL apps are closed!

The latest update didn't fix this either...

Anyone else having the same issue or know a solution?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Eject works fine for me on 10.15.1, but I have to say I have not tried (drag to Bin etc), instead opting for the more traditional (right-click-eject) command.
 
Thanks for your replies!
None of the solutions have worked... I should mention this is the case with any USB flash drives and its becoming really annoying!
 
Curious what hardware + Mac you use. Direct connect to the Mac’s USB port, self powered or not.
I had issues with drives and sleep - not with us mounting - but it now looks like it may have been USBC dock.
Try using Disk Utility to unmount. It may say there are multiple volumes and to eject one or all.
 
I am running OS 10.15.1 on an external SSD, and in fact am typing this while in that environment. I just plugged a flash drive into my hub, and copied a file to it (the full OS 10.14.6 installer). When it completed, I just moved my cursor over the flash drive's icon, did a right click, and selected Eject. It worked fine.
 
I have the same problem as you. If I want to eject my USB flash drive, the MacBook always gives a message that it is being used by 1 or more programs, while this is not the case. I can only forcibly eject it.
When I was using Mojave, I did not have this problem.

I tried it with another USB and it had this problem too. I am using a SanDisk flashdrive in combination with a MacBook Pro 2017.
 
I have 4 flash drives, with 2 of them being SanDisk models, one is a PNY, and the other is a Lexar. Never had an issue ejecting them "normally" (via a right mouse click), no matter which Mac OS I use. And no matter which USB port I have it plugged into.
 
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None of the solutions are working!
SFeV said:
I have the same problem as you. If I want to eject my USB flash drive, the MacBook always gives a message that it is being used by 1 or more programs, while this is not the case. I can only forcibly eject it.
When I was using Mojave, I did not have this problem.

I tried it with another USB and it had this problem too. I am using a SanDisk flashdrive in combination with a MacBook Pro 2017.
Click to expand...

Yes! Another person!
Have you dug deeper and found out what might be causing it?
 
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I am entering this post via my Catalina "environment", ie, from an external Samsung SSD with OS 10.15.1 installed. I just copied a movie from one of my other external SSDs to a Lexar Flash Drive. Both devices were plugged into USB ports on my external USB hub. When that completed, I right clicked on the icon for the Lexar device, and selected Eject. It worked fine. Did the same with the external SSD containing the movie I copied, and once again was able to Eject it fine. I then plugged the Lexar drive back in, removed that movie I had just copied to it, and once again right clicked on the icon and selected Eject. It worked flawlessly.

I repeated the same procedure with a San Disk Flash Drive, and it worked.

Finally, I plugged in a PNY Flash Drive to a USB port on the hub, then copied a file (a funny old Miller Lite Commercial) on the Catalina SSD to the Flash Drive. I then again right clicked on the icon for the PNY device, and selected Eject. It worked fine. I then plugged the PNY drive back in, removed that movie I had just copied to it, and once again right clicked on the icon and selected Eject. It worked flawlessly.
 
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It's really strange... I'm not doing anything different from the Mojave days yet it still insists that there's an app using it. My late 2011 iMac is running High Sierra and it's not facing the problem, so it's likely not my flash drive. My MacBook Pro(mid-2014, running Catalina) has this problem of force ejecting for every flash drive I throw at it.

I guess I'll contact Apple and see what they say. I'll post an update here as soon as I've done so.
 
Sirious said:
It's really strange... I'm not doing anything different from the Mojave days yet it still insists that there's an app using it. My late 2011 iMac is running High Sierra and it's not facing the problem, so it's likely not my flash drive. My MacBook Pro(mid-2014, running Catalina) has this problem of force ejecting for every flash drive I throw at it.

I guess I'll contact Apple and see what they say. I'll post an update here as soon as I've done so.
Click to expand...

I have the same issue. Only with a Samsung T5 SSD. With another external disks, no problem.
 
While I've already written it earlier in the thread, I feel I should reiterate for newcomers with the same issue, that you can run lsof in Terminal to see what processes hold open files on a device or folder (or specific file). The command stands for list open files. With no input it lists everything, but point it to a directory, like /Volumes/SanDisk\ SSD/ in my case, and it lists only open files in that directory. In my example below, I've opened a text file called hello.txt with nano in another Terminal window.

1579555684639.png
 
I have this problem . Always have. Various OS versions. Various drives. Various machines. Ejecting has always been a problem for me, and it's super frustrating.

If something is preventing me from ejecting, THEN TELL ME WHAT IT IS!!!!
Nothing is running so it must be an Apple process of some kind. I know it is, because force quitting Finder usually give me a brief window of opportunity to eject. lsof is just a big mess. I can see that Quicklook is accessing the images on the drive. Why? What is so important , that Quicklook has to do this right now and not relinquish control?

 
Sirious said:
Hey all,

I'm having an issue with Catalina and using USB flash drives.

When I have finished my work, I quit all apps and go to eject it as normal (drag to Bin etc) and usually this works. However since updating to Catalina, I am being FORCED to click 'Force Eject' because apparently an app is still using it - not true because ALL apps are closed!

The latest update didn't fix this either...

Anyone else having the same issue or know a solution?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Although this is obviously an old post, I can tell you this has been happening to me since I upgraded to the macOS Sonoma. I CAN normally eject my SSDs, but as for my self powered external HDD, it's been a headache, always prompting me to force eject the disk.

If you guys know this happens with self powered HDDs and have come up with a solution, it would be nice if you could share. Thank you.
 
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