I have an USB External Hard Drive which has been behaving strangely lately. I'm concerned, amongst other things, that it doesn't seem to Eject properly1.
When I
- Press the Eject button in Finder;
- Eject the Volume in Disk Utility;
- Or
diskutil unmountDisk
in Terminal;
the drive continues to be listed in Disk Utility and diskutil list
in Terminal. It is however not visible in Finder. Adding to my concerns is that the drive make mechanical sounds even after Eject.
My question is if it's normal that the drive continues to be listed in Disk Utility and diskutil
even after Eject? To me it seems strange, but perhaps it's intentional in the sense that the Volume has been unmounted but the drive is still USB-connected?
1What has raised my concerns about this is because the drive exhibits I/O errors when trying to backup my NAS to it. The drive is formatted in HFS+. Previously, the drive was formatted as exFAT, and the volume could then not be mounted by macOS, but Disk Utility and diskutil
could list the device. At that time, the same Eject "issue" as described above occurred. It didn't feel as if it was properly ejected since I heard it making sounds, and once macOS even complained about not ejecting properly even after pressing the Eject button and seeing it become grayed in Finder.