Turn off the Mac. Then disconnect. That's safe.
Or just disconnect. That's safe is nothing has been written to it.
Kees
I have plugged an external disk to my Mac. Now, I want to eject it. But my Mac stubbornly refuses and says that an application may be using the disk.
I have not launched any app neither opened any file from the disk.
I have downloaded and installed the app What's Keeping Me? This app is quite nice. She tells me that the process mds is using my disk.
I have killed the process mds and several processes mdworker. These are for Spotlight. But such processes get spawned again.
How can I eject my disk from my Mac ?
I have Mac OS X 10.6.8.

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic