Unwarranted "Disk In Use" Messages in Mac OS X 10.2.x

We have sporadic reports, as well as in-house occurences, of unwarranted "Disk In Use" messages in Mac OS X 10.2.x, preventing users from ejecting disks and performing other functions under certain circumstances. Ray Srour details one scenario for the problem in a networking environment:

"When logging in (as admin) through a local network to a Mac OS X 10.2.x client machine which has a CD in it, and mounting that CD, no matter what files I try to transfer from the cd on the remote machine to the local hard drive I consistently get an error that the files are in use when they clearly are not. If I walk back to the Mac OS X 10.2.x machine where the CD is located and transfer the files to the internal Hard Drive, then walk back to other machine, log in again as the admin and connect to the internal Hard Drive (as opposed to the cd) and transfer the files all works well."

Our in-house Power Macintosh G4/733, running Mac OS X 10.2.1, often reports that the external 20 GB WiebeTech FireWire drive is in use, despite a lack of running applications and no disk activity reported by the drive's LED indicator.

Some incidences of problems could be caused by iChat, according to Knoweledge Base article #107213, which states "You may not be able to eject (or unmount) a volume--a disk or partition--after sending a file in iChat." The solution, according to Apple, is as follows:

"This occurs after sending another iChat user a file stored on a volume other than the startup disk. To prevent the issue, copy the file to the Mac OS X startup disk before sending the file with iChat."

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