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Question

How to eject my external drive when my Mac refuses.

Aug 18, 2014 8:29PM PDT

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.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: eject
Aug 18, 2014 8:50PM PDT

Turn off the Mac. Then disconnect. That's safe.
Or just disconnect. That's safe is nothing has been written to it.

Kees

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(NT) Agreed
Aug 18, 2014 10:53PM PDT