Leopard Won't Eject External USB HDD

[Svana]

I have a Macbook pro which I have installed the Mac OS Leopard on it and running on a i5 processor with 2GB RAM, 250GB Hard Disk. I have lots movies and songs in my Mac. But now my hard disk is out of storage space. So I brought new external USB Hard disk drive of storage 360GB. I connected it my system and stored several files from my system hard disk. After completion copying large amount of data to the external hard drive I tried to remove the external hard disk by selecting safe removal option but it didn’t eject or dismount. The system was showing error message. I couldn’t find the answer that whether it’s a disk malfunction or Leopard problem or else. Can anyone please help me?

[Alondra]

I have noted your problem properly. I also saw several quotes about this in past. While copying large amount of files there could be chance that some files still in process of copy. But sometime the system won’t show processing window. At that time check the "Activity Monitor" to see any process is running or not. This is because rarely some processes are keep running without the user knowledge.

[Mrigankasekhar]

Many users face the similar problem of ejecting external hard drive from the system which is running leopard. If u cannot unmount the HDD safely then try to use the command line. Type the following code on your system under the Applications and Utilities section.
unmount/Volumes/My External HDD Name

[Muwafaq]

Many External USB HDD have the problem of ejecting safely from the terminal. If the HDD won’t eject safely then open the activity monitor in your terminal to check whether any process are running or not.Also see that any files are still copying, how long you have been copying files, how much the size of data etc. sometimes the hardware malfunction in HDD could cause the similar problem.

[KennedII]

I have gone through your problem recently. You have not mentioned what kind of error message you are getting on your terminal. Without mentioning the kind of error message it is hard to find the particular solution. Anyway for your problem I can able to give you a two simple possible solution.Either “Logoff” or “Restart” your terminal. By this the system automatically restores the settings as needed and ejects the HDD.

[Christina 80]

If you are regular usage of the External drives then there might be chance of refusal by the OS to eject External HDD. Apple Has figured this issue several time before. IT will be planning to address it on next version of Leopard. There is a good utility called WhatsOpen does help us eject the volume. It contains several features. If you don’t bother about losing data then there is a Force Eject button which will stop any process on the drive & ejects it normally