Is there a way to find what applications are running on an external hard drive?

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Sometimes a hard drive will not "unmount" because there are applications being run from it.

I have copies of Apps on the external HD.
I have found occasionally that when opening a document on the main HD that the computer will use the Application not in the main Applications Folder, BUT it will use the Application that resides on the external HD.
OK, the computer should not do that. BUT it occasionally does.
Then when I want to unmount the external HD, I cannot.
BUT I don't know which Apps have started up from the ext HD.
Of course I could quit ALL my apps. But I usually don't want to. I just want to find which Apps have started up from the Ext HD.

Is there a way to find out what applications are running from the ext HD?
 
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iMac 24" 2.66 C2D, 13" MacBook i7 2.9GHz, iPad 3, iPhone 4
Why do you have installed applications on the external if the same app you want to use is on your internal drive as well? Does the drive travel between two computers?
 
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Why do you have installed applications on the external if the same app you want to use is on your internal drive as well? Does the drive travel between two computers?

It is merely a back-up from some months ago of everything that was on the main HD at that time.
 
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Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
Can you boot from the external drive and see that way what is running and maybe uninstall the problem application? PowerPC require Firewire and Intel will boot of USB2.
 
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MacMini 14.3, 8.1 & 4.1, OS 13.5, 10.14, & 10.11 & 10.6; Macbook Pro 8.2, OS 10.12.
Can you boot from the external drive and see that way what is running and maybe uninstall the problem application? PowerPC require Firewire and Intel will boot of USB2.

Harry, the OP has received an interesting answer to this question on another forum Is there a way to find what applications are running on an external hard drive? - The macosxhints Forums. It's to do with applications running in the background macosxhints.com - Discover which programs prevent disk image ejection
 
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Way... way too many specs to list.
lsof also works and is included with your OS!

Open terminal...


In this instance I want to know whats in use on my mp3 share, which is /Volumes/mp3

Code:
mikeMbp:~ mike$ mount
/dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local)
fdesc on /dev (fdesc, union)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, automounted)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted)
//mike@beer/export2 on /Volumes/export2 (smbfs, nodev, nosuid, mounted by mike)
//mike@terminator/mp3 on /Volumes/mp3 (smbfs, nodev, nosuid, mounted by mike)
mikeMbp:~ mike$ lsof | grep /Volumes/mp3
iTunes    6589 mike   25r     REG      45,5   2736128 18446744072614866694 /Volumes/mp3/Fishbone/Fishbone - Fishbone/Fishbone - 01 - Ugly.mp3
mikeMbp:~ mike$
 

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