8 Fixes for When You Can’t Eject an External Drive on Your Mac
Unsplash, NARhttps://unsplash.com/photos/ute2XAFQU2IScreenshot by Subham Raj – No Attribution Required
After working with an external drive, you need to eject it on your Mac before physically disconnecting the drive. But what if the external drive is taking an eternity to eject or not ejecting at all? If this is a problem that often happens with your Mac, don’t worry. There are several solutions available to overcome this obstacle.
Here are all the fixes that will help you eject an external drive from your Mac if it isn’t working properly.
1. Wait a Moment, Then Try Ejecting Again
Sometimes when you leave an external drive for too long, it goes to sleep to save power and increase the life of the drive. In such scenarios, if you’ve tried to eject it, but nothing’s happening, just wait a moment for the drive to wake up and try again. This happens because it usually takes up some time to fully wake the drive and execute the process of ejection.
2. Close Opened Files From the External Drive
Your Mac won’t let you eject an external drive if you’re using one of the files on it. This is to protect those files from becoming corrupted. So make sure you close any applications that might be using a file on your drive, then try ejecting it again. UseCmd + Tabto switch between different apps and make sure that any relevant ones are closed.
If an app doesn’t respond, you shouldforce quit the app on your Macinstead to ensure that it’s closed.
3. Empty the Trash Before Ejecting
Screenshot by Subham Raj – No Attribution Required
An external drive also won’t eject if you have trashed some files from it and they’re still sat in the Trash can. If this is the case,empty the Trash on your Macbefore trying to eject the drive again. If the Trash won’t empty, we’ve shownhow to fix problems with your Mac’s Trash.
4. Try to Force Eject the Drive
If the steps above haven’t helped, it’s possible to try force ejecting your external drive. To do so, try ejecting the drive normally by clicking on theEjectbutton in Finder, then when the drive doesn’t eject, clickForce Ejectin the popup. Follow the prompts to force the drive to eject.
If you’ve been unable to quit any files from your external drive, forcing it to eject may cause problems with the file.
5. Relaunch Finder on Your Mac
The Finder app on a Mac can also cause problems when you’re trying to eject a drive. Since Finder is a core app of macOS, you can’t completely quit it. So to deal with this, you can try relaunching Finder instead. To do so:
6. Use Terminal to Eject Your Drive
it’s possible to also try using the Terminal app to eject an external drive on your Mac. Here are the steps you need to follow to do this:
Screenshot by Subham Raj - No Attribution Required
7. Run First Aid in Disk Utility
Your external drive won’t eject if it has been corrupted or developed any other problems. To fix this, you can try running the First Aid option in Disk Utility. Just follow these steps:
First Aid will try to repair your external drive. Once this process is complete, try ejecting it again. you’re able to click theEjectbutton within Disk Utility to try it.
8. Shut Down Your Mac and Pull Out the Drive
If none of the solutions above are working for you, then your last option is to shut down your Mac and just remove the drive without ejecting it. This can still be a safe option because shutting down your Mac will close all the applications that might be using your external drive first.
If you have to, you canforce shut down your Mac, but we don’t recommend this unless you have no other choice. This isn’t the best solution as removing a drive without properly ejecting it can cause problems, but shutting down your Mac will help a bit.
Say Goodbye to Ejection Problems on Your Mac
Usually, when you may’t eject an external drive on a Mac, it’s because one of the files on it is open at the time. So be sure to close all the opened files and quit all the running applications before trying to eject it. The solutions above should help you no matter what’s causing this issue for you, though.
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