Devices refusing to unmount: Force quitting the Finder may resolve

We continue to cover an issue where FireWire devices refuse to properly unmount under Mac OS X 10.4.2.

In some cases, the "Auto-Protect" component of Norton AntiVirus (NAV) can prevent FireWire drives, and potentially other devices, from properly unmounting. The solution is to either use the "Disable Auto-Protect" option within Norton AntiVirus' preferences, or remove the utility entirely. Yesterday we posted a workaround from Symantec that involves disabling Anti-Virus scanning for Spotlight index files.

In other cases, different issues including out-of-date drive firmware, persisting disk activity and more can cause the issue.

One fairly reliable workaround in these cases (where Norton AntiVirus is not the culprit) is to force quit the Finder. When the Finder automatically re-launches, you may be able to properly unmount the drive.

A MacFixIt reader writes:

"About the trouble some folks have had unmounting drives in 10.4.2, I haven't had it since upgrading. However, I did sometimes have a problem unmounting firewire drives in 10.3. Rather than going through all the bother of a restart, I found that force-quitting Finder took care of the problem; once Finder restarted, I was able to unmount. A considerable time saver instead of restarting."

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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