Yes, well my system is ok but it takes a long time to clean up and to liberate space when it it out.
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Taking a long time to eject Time Machine disk
- Thread starter eddjedi
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Yes, you have to erase the content to reformat. Make another backup before you do so.
I found that my APFS spinning disk Time Machine drive start to spin when right click on the ion to eject. This is when backup is not running and the disk was supposed at idle. The icon quickly disappeared from desktop, but if I go to Disk Utility, the drive is there, and right click the drive and select eject will get a popup windows says the disk is in use. The spin can last for minutes with head moving noise. The disk was mounted to LG5K connected to the laptop. If I disconnect the laptop from the monitor after the click sounds are gone. The disk will keep spin forever when it connected to the monitor! I have really to pull the disk from the monitor to power it off.
Yup ejected instantly. I had previously erased the disk and reformatted it as APFS (which is automatic if you use an external disk as Time Machine). It would not eject properly as it kept saying "the disk is in use" so - per Apple's instructions - I logged out and in again and I could eject. Now no problem it is instant...much better.
I also updated to 11.3, but the time machine disk still spinning after ejecting (icon on desktop disappear right the way), but in Disk Utility, you can see the drive, and right click to eject there will have a pop up message says the drive is in use. And the drive is keep spinning. Basically same as 11.2
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The drive stopped spin after 10~20 minutes, but ejecting from Disk Utility still says it is in use.
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried, but not working. The volume can be ejected following your steps, but the disk is spinning after ejection, and the root of the disk (above the container) cannot be ejected as usual. And the volume can normally be ejected without relaunch Finder.
I'm experiencing this on Big Sur 11.4. Thankfully, I found this YouTube video helpful. Sharing to help others.
Hard Drive Won't Eject on Mac | The disk wasn't ejected because one or more programs may be using it - YouTube
Hard Drive Won't Eject on Mac | The disk wasn't ejected because one or more programs may be using it - YouTube
Summary of the video: Relaunch finder from Apple > Force Quit > Finder > Relaunch. Then try to eject your drive.
Worked for me, and I just saved you watching a minute and a half of video.
LaCie Rugged drives are formatted to APFS
I have seven Time Machine Back up Drives. All the same format and all LaCie Rugged 2TB USB-C
I noticed this with not just ejecting, but also mounting. I figured out the problem and decided I'd share it with you all since the cause isn't the same as most of yours.
The slow mounting and unmounting for me was caused because I made a conventional partition on the disk using APFS. It just slowly got worse and worse over time. I'm not sure why, but formatting the drive and making a dynamic volume instead of a hard partition solved the problem entirely.
The slow mounting and unmounting for me was caused because I made a conventional partition on the disk using APFS. It just slowly got worse and worse over time. I'm not sure why, but formatting the drive and making a dynamic volume instead of a hard partition solved the problem entirely.
I fixed this issue on my Mac (Macbook Pro M1 Big Sur) by removing the disk icon from the Finder sidebar. WHen trying to eject the partitition with Disk Utility, DU reported it as being in use by finder even though there were no windows open. Giving the icon the flick and restarting Finder did the trick and it hasn't bothered me since. I've mounted and unmounted the disk a number of times, but, when I think of it, haven't yet rebooted.
It happened to me in previous OS versions, too. Apparently it's in use by Finder. I force quit Finder and boom, it ejects right after it Finder comes back.
I'm running Big Sur on a 2015 MBP Time Machine would not eject. The drive is a Western Digital 2 TB with a USBc removable adapter to its cable. My MBP uses only USB3 plugins so I took off the type c adapter and used their cable. From a hint from some other thread I exhanged the cable from one of my many other drives. It worked!! now I can jst connect my time machine when I want to and diconnect at will too.
I've been having this problem since switching to Big Sur (11.6). I'm on a Mac Pro 7,1. I have a few external SSD drives and Time Machine. They are all taking too long to eject (about 2 minutes +) compared to Catalina OS, which took about 10 sec. The TM was not formatted as APFS. Any recent workaround or solutions out there? Thanks.