can't eject WD my book for mac external hard drive

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I'm using WD My book for Mac and when I eject it it comes up with the following: The disk "WD-Harddrive" wasn't ejected because one or more programs may be using it" I have closed all programs why is this happening?
 
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Before I could eject the "Western Digital My Book For Mac" I had to shut down my computer then unplug external hard drive and unplug usb then plug them both back in again. This is happening quite a bit and I just bought it. It says it can't be ejected because one or more programs is using it but I have closed all programs. I did some reading it said something about "spotlight" but it didn't give me any answers or solutions.
 
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Hello and welcome to the forum! :)

Please provide more information: 1) Mac model/year; 2) OS X installed; 3) Format (and number of partitions) of your WD HD; 4) Specific specs on the external HD (e.g. model/size); and 5) How are you using the HD, i.e. a WD program that came w/ the drive, Time Machine, etc. Might help us respond better - Dave
 
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Hello,

1. Macbook Pro that will be two years old in February
2. OS X 10.8.5
3. I'm not sure what you mean by this I have whatever the WD hard drive came with
4. WD My Book for Mac desktop storage 2 TB
5. probably the WD program that came with the drive as I haven't changed anything. I have time machine but have not used this to back up I have it turned off right now. I have read that Time Machine and/or Spotlight can be causing problems but not sure.

At the moment I am only backing up photos, videos and documents.

I really appreciate your help. I phone Western Digital the other day and they couldn't help me they told me it's an Apple problem.

thanks,
sue
 
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1. Macbook Pro that will be two years old in February
2. OS X 10.8.5
3. I'm not sure what you mean by this I have whatever the WD hard drive came with
4. WD My Book for Mac desktop storage 2 TB
5. probably the WD program that came with the drive as I haven't changed anything. I have time machine but have not used this to back up I have it turned off right now. I have read that Time Machine and/or Spotlight can be causing problems but not sure.

At the moment I am only backing up photos, videos and documents.

I really appreciate your help. I phone Western Digital the other day and they couldn't help me they told me it's an Apple problem.

Hi again Sue - thanks for the additional information - :)

Just wondering but w/ an early 2013 MBPro, why have you not upgraded to Yosemite (10.10.1)? Of course, your issue could be corrected w/ a change of OS X?

If you bought the WD for Mac, I'm assuming that the disk formatting is 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)', but to check simply open Disk Utility (in Applications or from Launchpad -> Other) and highlight the external HD, then look @ the bottom (see my screen capture of my Seagate external HD, blue arrow) - this drive is my Time Machine MBPro BU (I have the same early 2013 laptop). I've had no problems in running Time Machine on this computer - does not create a bootable drive, but does incremental backups of all of your files.

As expected, a call to Western Digital was a 'goose chase' - ;) I would check their website to see if there is a User's Forum and/or FAQ area - also make sure that there is not a firmware upgrade which might address this issue; I have a Seagate external HD also attached to my wife's iMac - at first (early last year), it would just disappear in Finder and Time Machine BUs were suspended - a firmware upgrade from their website addressed the problem.

Now, does your WD HD mount in Finder (see second pic below) - shows my Seagate HD connected - w/ your HD attached, do you see the little 'eject' symbol (blue arrow)? If so, have you used it to 'eject' the drive after your backups? I'll stop there and let you respond. Dave
.

Screen Shot 2014-12-30 at 5.18.25 PM.png

Screen Shot 2014-12-30 at 5.20.10 PM.png
 
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Screen Shot 2014-12-30 at 5.13.17 PM.png

Hi,

Attached document for your review. Yes I see the hard drive on left side of screen under devices. The guy from western digital told me it is best to eject hard drive by dragging it to the trash, not sure if this matters which way it's ejected.

I noticed on my screen shot where it says Owners enabled mine says NO and your screen shot said yes. Not sure why mine is different.

Thank you.

sue
 

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I noticed on my screen shot where it says Owners enabled mine says NO and your screen shot said yes. Not sure why mine is different.

Yours should also say "owners enabled". I have a WD USB 3 external Passport I use for CCC backup and it will sometimes not eject because it tells me that the drive is busy when it's not. I can usually do a "force eject" and that works but it's not a good idea to have to do that even occasionally.

Try repairing permissions on your WD Passport from Disk Utility. See if that helps.
 
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View attachment 21552
Attached document for your review. Yes I see the hard drive on left side of screen under devices. The guy from western digital told me it is best to eject hard drive by dragging it to the trash, not sure if this matters which way it's ejected.

I noticed on my screen shot where it says Owners enabled mine says NO and your screen shot said yes. Not sure why mine is different............

Hi Sue - well, you're formatting is Mac OS Extended, as I suspected, so you are fine there. I've never paid attention to the 'Owners Enabled' label, likely has to do w/ sharing the disk & files - look at this Apple Support Article for an explanation - appears that you could enable that option but not sure that it will correct your problem (but likely would not hurt)?

As to using the 'eject' symbol vs. dragging the HD to the trash, no problem in trying the first option to see if you receive the same warning messages. Also, make sure there is no firmware upgrade to your specific drive on the WD site.

As a further step in Disk Utility - go ahead and 'Verify' the HD just to make sure there are no file or permissions problems? Post results back here - Dave :)
 
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Some WD external drives and some other brands often have an normally invisible partition with some of their propriety software that could be running in the background.

It may show in Activity Monitor and Disk Utility can show all partitions if the Debug menu is enabled and set to show invisibles.

A full Partition/erase/format will usually get rid of the extra partition. And get all the available HD space back as well. Their software is NOT needed if it exists and can cause other problems.
 
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I had the same problem sunday and I found out there was a file in the trash that did not want to perish.
What i did was restore that file, and shut everything down.
during reboot, i changed the suffix of the damaged, a was able to slaughter the pesky file
everything is back to normal, for today until i try to open iPhoto!
i hope that helps!
 
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Hello, I was the one who originally had problems with my WD harddrive and now I have recently upgraded to OS X EI Capitan. I am still having problems ejecting the harddrive. And over in the finder window under "devices" it show WD-Harddrive but no eject symbol beside it. I tried to drag it in the trash can and that didn't work either. I am forever having problems with this harddrive. Geesh what do i do now? This is very frustrating.

thanks people,
sue
 

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I would replace the drive. If it's still under warranty, WD will issue a RMA and replace it for free. Make sure you copy all your data off that drive on to another as soon as you can.
 

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Yours should also say "owners enabled". I have a WD USB 3 external Passport I use for CCC backup and it will sometimes not eject because it tells me that the drive is busy when it's not. I can usually do a "force eject" and that works but it's not a good idea to have to do that even occasionally.

Try repairing permissions on your WD Passport from Disk Utility. See if that helps.

Sorry this is not really helpful in any way but last night I did a erase and format of a partition on a Seagate 1Tb ext HD, used CCC to create a new bootable clone of my Mac HD (El Capitan 10.11.1) and after quitting CCC I had the same problem as our OP. Rather than Force Eject I simply restarted my MBP and after restart was able to eject successfully. This just happens from time to time no apparent reason. I had also emptied Trash prior to the problem so I have no explanation but I would say a restart is probably better than a Forced Eject.
 
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Hmmm…??? I really wonder if there's any problem with the WD drive, and maybe just an operator or OS quirk.

AFAIK, there's not even a normal way to eject a drive using the "Devices" in the sidebar window.

Is the WD drive showing on the Desktop?
Does selecting it and using right-click to eject it not work??
What, if any, messages or error messages do you still get when attempting to eject the drive?

And I guess it's not really too critical to eject the drive while booted as the problem has existed for almost a year now. ;)
 
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Sharing a solution that worked for me.

I realize this is an older thread but I had the same issue. I came upon this thread while looking for a solution, so I wanted to update any future seekers. Check the Activity Monitor (search by clicking the magnifying glass in the upper right corner of your screen), which shows all programs that are currently running that may not be seen in the desktop bar icons. In my case, Dropbox was open and as soon as I "Quit" the program, my WD My Book ejected fine.
 

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So one would assume that there are files on your WD My Book that are synced to DropBox? That is not the case in my example but a good point for others with the same issue.
In my case I found that adding it to the exclusion list in Spotlight Preferences stopped Spotlight from indexing it and allowed it to be ejected in the usual manner.
And as an aside If you have DropBox there should be a Menu Bar icon clicking that and the "gear wheel" in the drop down allows you to quit without needing to resort to Activity Monitor.
 
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I have the same problem

Hi everyone,

I thought I would post my same problem here, as I have looked at all the suggestions for Sue's problem but they haven't fixed mine. So here's my situation:

I have a WD My Passport Ultra 2TB, which was purchased about 2 weeks ago (mid March). I first used it with my old Macbook (2009) with no problems. I formatted it with Disk Utility on that computer and created 2 partitions:

1x 1.75TB = photos, movies, documents (Mac extended journaled formatting)
1x 250GB = photos (compatible with Windows formatting as I had to transfer old photos from a windows computer)

I had no problems up to this point. However, YESTERDAY I finally upgraded to a Macbook Pro (Retina, mid-2015, 15in). Today was the first day I connected this hard drive to the new laptop. I was running Lightroom CC - I imported photos, edited & exported all to the WD My Passport. I copied from my old computer a few folders containing images, documents and music files.

I have just finished my work and now would like to eject the WD My Passport, but every time and way I try, it says that "one or more programs may be using it". Now what is strange is that it is only the 1.75TB partition (the mac one) that is not ejecting - the small partition has already ejected no problem.

Now I have everything closed except Opera browser. I have tried to put it in the Trash Can (same message), ejecting from Finder (there is the eject sign next to it) and right-clicking and eject.

I had a look in the disk utility to see if the "owners' was enabled - it wasn't, so I did what someone said (click on WD folder, Get Info, Sharing & Permissions and I unchecked "ignore ownership to this volume". I returned to Disk utility and saw that "owners" was now enabled. I tried to eject, it didn't work.

Another person suggested that something is using the disk, but I cannot figure out what: I do not yet have dropbox downloaded (only Lightroom & Photoshop CC); I did have a look in the Activity Monitor and there are so many things running, some of which have strange names, such as "familycircled, soagent, bird, imagent, fmfd" and a lot more - is this normal??? They do not have icons next to them. Can I have a virus or something??? I have stopped all Adobe CC programs too.

Please help! I do not really have a lot of computer knowledge - just basic stuff.

Thanks,

Jess
 
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Well, I have answered my own question. As I was concerned about viruses, I firstly turned off my computer and removed the hard drive. I then rebooted and downloaded Bitdefender and ran a full scan. It came back with 6 threats detected! On a day-old Mac... I'm using the WiFi at my parent's house so not sure how this happened. So after Bitdefender removed the threats I plugged my WD My Passport back in again and tried to eject - it worked!
 
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I'm a bit curious as to how you formatted the two volumes on your external drive, but not to worry I guess if it's working. And BTW: it could have been Spotlight still indexing your large partition and was the "busy" app.

It would have been curious to know what it was that Bitdefender found, and if they really had anything to do with your problem.

Anyway, good to hear things seem to be working well.
 
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Hi, well I formatted the volumes with Disk Utility on the old macbook 2009. I formatted the 2TB in 2 partitions, one small 250GB (MS-DOS FAT) as I had to transfer from an old windows system some photos, and a 1.75TB partition just the normal MAC OS Extended (Journaled).

Yes, I saw that Spotlight was still running in the activity monitor but I didn't stop it and the hard drive ejected as soon as the threats had been removed by the antivirus. I am also extremely curious as to whether the threats had to do with it. I did do a virus scan on the hard drive afterwards and it came back with 0 threats, thankfully. There was one more thing which I did not mention - I had also used 2x usb sticks that I had regularly used with my old computer (which never had a virus on it). I used them both to transfer small folders to the new computer and one of these USB sticks ejected normally; however, the other was the same like the hard drive - it was still 'in use'. I did force eject it anyway, as the data and usb were not so important (unlike the hard drive!)

When I look into the history of the antivirus, I can see the beginning of the threats it found - they started off as "applications.spigot.browExt" found in Library/Application Support.

I am just happy it works now and on the positive side my Mac will be nice and safe now. But if you or anyone could confirm whether this was actually because of the viruses or not, it would be interesting to know!
 

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