Time Machine on Mini

[Jessica08]

I bought a new external hard drive so I decided to set up Time Machine as well. After it backed up everything, I tried ejecting the hard drive, and it won't let me. I don't want to force eject it so how can I safely do this?

 

[multicore]

I bought a new external hard drive so I decided to set up Time Machine as well. After it backed up everything, I tried ejecting the hard drive, and it won't let me. I don't want to force eject it so how can I safely do this?

Did you turn TM off?

 

[Jessica08]

I did, but it still wouldn't let me eject it. I finally had to reboot while it was still plugged in then it ejected normally after that. Some people over at the Apple forums were having the same problem, and they said it's something to do with the new OS. Apple knows and are working on a fix is what they said.

 

[BeatCrazy]

Why would you need to eject the TM disc?

 

[Jessica08]

Well I turn my computer off at night so I wanted to eject the hard drive in case it caused any problems turning it off while it was plugged in. I don't keep my computer on all the time.

 

[BeatCrazy]

Well I turn my computer off at night so I wanted to eject the hard drive in case it caused any problems turning it off while it was plugged in. I don't keep my computer on all the time.

You can shut down the Mac without fear of the TM disc getting disrupted. In fact, you'd probably have more issues doing daily ad hoc ejections of the TM disc vs. just letting the OS handle it as part of the shutdown routine.

 

[Jessica08]

Cool. Thank you. I didn't realize that. It's my first time using Time Machine so I didn't know.

 

[BeatCrazy]

Cool. Thank you. I didn't realize that. It's my first time using Time Machine so I didn't know.

Yup. OSX doesn't really like you ejecting the TM disc, and it could be doing some low-level system communication to the disc, even outside the backup period. When you do a normal shutdown, the OS will do all the steps it needs to do in order to disconnect it safely.