My Book 1TB Refuses To Unmount Sometimes

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for macOS
1

Hello,

I have a Western Digital My Book 1TB external drive that  refuses to unmount sometimes. The drive is formatted Mac OS Extended Journaled [GUID Partition Table] but I only use it as storage to copy files, documents, movies, and music. After I’m done copying files I eject the drive to unmount it when I get a Finder error “The disk wasn’t ejected because one or more programs may be using it”.  I try several methods to unmount it including Disk Utility and dragging it to the Trash but the darn thing refuses to unmount.  The only method that works is a Finder “Force Eject” that pops up and after i click on the Force Eject button then the drive gets unmounted off the desktop.  I would like to find a better fix for this stupid and frustrating problem.   Thanks.  27" iMac, 8gigs of RAM, Mac OS Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

2

Hello Notung,

Make sure that you don’t have any program accessing the drive, not even itunes playing music from the drive.

Also try testing the drive on a different computer if possible.

Are you using the drive for backup as well?

3

Hello, thanks for responding.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                           I use the drive strictly as storage to copy files, documents, M4V movies, MP3 and AIFF audio files.  There is no operating system on the drive at all.  The drive is NOT used for Time Machine or as a backup.   Thanks.