I am having a problem ejecting usb flash drives from my MacBook Air running Catalina. This also occurs on a MacBook Air running Mojave.

When I try to eject the drive using the conventional methods(drag to trash or command e), nothing happens. It occurs with multiple different drives. I tried a restart, but that doesn't function when the drives are installed. The only way to perform the eject is to manually shut down, boot into Safe Mode, restart and then eject.

By the way, what damage would I do if I just removed the drive with out ejecting? I have never done it that way for fear of damaging the drive or losing data.

Any ideas?

I've had this on occasion on HS, which is what I'm on with my 2013 MBA.
I've pulled drives when I got tired of waiting.
I ran DU upon remount. I've never lost a 1 or a 0.
That's what I'd try.
Sometimes it's just old slow dumb drives.

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swf
The only way to perform the eject is to manually shut down, boot into Safe Mode, restart and then eject.

Once your machine shuts down, just pull out the drive. Part of the shutdown procedure is to unmount all drives. No need to restart and eject it.

Might be QuickLook or the Finder or Spotlight keeping it busy.

Finder and Spotlight are easy to troubleshoot.

Control-Option click on the Finder's icon in the Dock and opt to "Relaunch." After it reloads, try to eject the flash drive.

Spotlight: Drag the icon for the flash drive into the "Privacy" panel in the Spotlight pref's. (If the icon for the drive never appears there, this can point to a corrupt Spotlight DB.) Should be able to eject the flash drive immediately after adding its icon to this panel.

QuickLook: A little more advanced... Try killing QuickLook's processes in the Activity Monitor. (There may be 5-6 QuickLook processes.)

...If it turns out to be the Finder at fault, try viewing the contents of the flash drive in list-view instead of in column-view or cover-view. It seems to present fewer problems.

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More than once I have forgotten to eject a drive and just pulled it. It has never been a problem when that happens (but I try not to).

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You can also run Disk Utility to check/repair the thumb drives.

I have fried 2 different thumb drive yanking them out while still mounted.

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I've run across a street without looking several times in my younger days.

Never a problem for me, though it seemed to be tough on a few drivers.



I have fried 2 different thumb drive yanking them out while still mounted.


Same here.

I've also forgotten to unmount/eject a couple, as well as a couple external hard drives, with no issues.

I will not do that as a practice for either types of drives.

I still don't understand what Apple means by 'unmount' vs 'eject' and why both are used in the OS but not, apparently, to mean the exact same thing.

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I have this problem on a 2010 iMac w HS. Most times, I quit all programs running and just yank away.