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How to Force Eject a Volume or Drive in OS X

Posted in How To, OS X on 13/07/2012 by J. Glenn Künzler

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Sometimes OS X doesn’t want to let you eject a volume or an external drive. Sometimes this is because a program is using a file on the volume in question, but other times the volume just seems to be stuck! Fortunately, there’s an easy solution! We’ll show you two ways to force your Mac to let go!

Method 1

The easiest and safest way to force a volume to eject is to open a new Finder window, locate the drive or volume in the left-hand column, right-click or option-click the volume, and select Eject “[Volume Name]” in the drop down menu.

You may see a message like the one above, telling you that there may be a program using that volume. If you’re sure that’s not the case, then click “Force Eject…”, and Voila! That’s all there is to it!

Method 2

For those of you that prefer using Terminal, or would rather eject the drive with a single command, simply open Terminal, and type the following:

diskutil unmountDisk force /Volumes/DISK_NAME

Just replace  DISK_NAME with the name of the volume you want to eject, press enter, and you’re done!

I’ve found that the first method is much more successful – I’ve had the disk fail to unmount more than once using the Terminal command.

Note: Make sure you have closed all applications that may be using the volume you want to eject, and that the volume is not in use. Otherwise, you risk facing data corruption or even data loss! And, as always, use Terminal commands at your own risk!

  • Bob Johnson

    You should remember that you can always drag and drop the volume/disk into terminal and it will automatically enter the volume’s directory. For example type in: diskutil unmountDisk force and then drag and drop your drive.

    • Barnaby

      Thank you! This is excellent advice. I was having trouble working out the directory, because I didn’t know you had to put a before a space.

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Author

J. Glenn Künzler

Glenn is Managing Editor at MacTrast, and has been using a Mac since he bought his first MacBook Pro in 2006. Now he's up to his neck in Apple, and owns an old iBook, a 2012 iMac with an extra Thunderbolt display for good measure, a 4th-generation iPad, an iPad mini, 2 iPhones, and a Mac Mini that lives at the neighbor's house. He lives in a small town in Utah, enjoys bacon more than you can possibly imagine, and is severely addicted to pie.