Unable eject a USB drive, Finder just hangs

Question

I seem to be unable to eject a USB thumb drive from my Mac running Yosemite.

When I click on the eject button in finder next to the drive icon, Finder will just hang. It refuses to open any more files; I can't even restart Finder.

The only solution I've come up with is to restart my entire computer to get Finder back to being responsive.

How can I eject this USB thumb drive without hanging Finder up like this?

Answer 1

If you can not eject, then the next best thing to do is unmount the volume using the Disk Utility application. Once unmounted you can remove the device from the USB port.

For example, I have an mp3 player plugged in to my USB port. The volume has the label PEARL. If I highlight the volume the Unmount button will appear.

If I click on Unmount, the button will change to Mount. You will also notice the volume is no longer appears in the Finder. I can now unplug the mp3 player.

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Another solution would be to log out of your account, then disconnect the device.

Answer 2

I've used this script, wrapped as an app, to successfully force-eject 'sticky' USB drives & SD cards...

Source, MacTipper, credits left in place in script.

property show_credits : true

set the_volumes to do shell script "ls /Volumes/"
tell application "Finder" to set the_HD to path to home folder as string

set ejectable_volumes to {}
repeat with i in (every paragraph of the_volumes)
    if the_HD does not start with i then
        set end of ejectable_volumes to (i as string)
    end if
end repeat
if (count of items of ejectable_volumes) is 0 then
    tell me to activate
    display dialog "Sorry, but there are no ejectable volumes."
else if (count of items of ejectable_volumes) is 1 then
    tell me to activate
    set the_result to item 1 of ejectable_volumes as string
    display dialog ("Eject \"" & the_result & "\"?") buttons {"No", "Yes"} default button 2 cancel button "No"
    set the_path to quoted form of ("/Volumes/" & the_result as string)
    do shell script "hdiutil eject -force " & the_path
else
    tell me to activate
    set the_result to choose from list ejectable_volumes with prompt "Please choose a volume to eject (You can select multiple items):" with multiple selections allowed
    if the_result is not false then
        repeat with j in the_result
            set the_path to quoted form of ("/Volumes/" & j as string)
            do shell script "hdiutil eject -force " & the_path
        end repeat
    end if
end if

if show_credits is true then
    tell me to activate
    set the_credits to button returned of (display dialog "This applescript brought to you by The MacTipper Blog.\n\nhttp://mactipper.com" buttons {"Don't Show Again", "Visit TMB", "OK"} default button 3) as string
    if the_credits is "Don't Show Again" then
        set show_credits to false
    else if the_credits is "Visit TMB" then
        open location "http://mactipper.com"
    end if
end if