How To Fix Cannot Eject One Partion Of External Hard Drive Because It Is Being Used?

I recently got an 8TB external hard drive that I partitioned into two 4TB "drives". One partition is for Time Machine backups, and the other is for some storage (including my iTunes library). When I try to eject the hard drive (by ejecting one of the partitions and then choosing "eject all" when prompted), only one of the partitions ejects - the one with the backups. The Storage partition won't eject, and I get the "The disk "Storage" wasn't ejected because one or more programs may be using it" alert box (this always happens, even with no programs running). I don't want to Force Eject it because I don't want to damage any of the files. But then I can't get the Backup partition back, because it's already plugged into the computer! The only fix I've found is to turn the computer off, unplug the hard drive, then turn the computer on again. Is there a way to find out why a partition won't eject? And also, is there a way to re-find a hard drive once it's been "ejected" that doesn't include unplugging it?

Best Answered by

Vain Rowe

Answered on Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Hi there, if you want to regain access to the drive that's been ejected, you can mount it in Disk Utility. Just launch Disk Utility via Spotlight Search > click the partition that you need to regain access > click the Mount button. Then you can access this partition without any hitch.

For the partition that cannot be ejected, it is used as the Time Machine backup. If you want to eject the partition, you need to log out of the account that you're running and log in again. Click the Apple menu > click the Log Out of username option> log into your account one more time.