Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, Apple iPhone, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

How do I eject a USB disk drive?

Not to sound like a complete chowderhead, but when I have a USB disk drive hooked up to my Mac and then unplug it, I always get a scary warning. How do I avoid that and eject the drive properly before unplugging it?

Dave's Answer:

First off, repeat after me "just because it's the computer for the rest of us doesn't mean that it always makes sense". That can be your mantra for this particular adventure. :-)

Actually I have always found the disk eject mechanism in Mac OS X to be rather confusing, whether it's a DVD or CD disk, digital camera, or USB drive. Given the common visual metaphor of a tiny "x" circle on the top left of icons to delete the particular item. See Dashboard widgets, for example, or Apple's iPhone icons.

I can't fix the operating system, however, so instead I'll simply explain how you're supposed to eject the drive rather than just yank that baby outta the USB port. Oh, and why is it a problem? Because the operating system keeps a "cache", an image or copy of a portion of the drive's data in computer memory and writes it to disk (this is called "syncing") every so often, not instantly. Unplug it just before one of these sync events and the data on the drive could theoretically be out of date and incorrect.

So here's the dialog box you must be seeing when you pull your USB drive:

Mac OS X: USB Device Drive Removal Error

You can actually read the dialog box and follow it, but there are two easier ways to eject a USB device or drive in Mac OS X that'll make your life quite a bit easier.

Option one is to drag the device to the trashcan. Yes, don't panic, it's not indicating that you want the Mac operating system to reformat the device or wipe it clean, but rather the trashcan switches to a weird triangle icon instead, as you can see here when I drag my Corsair drive:

Mac OS X: USB Device Drive Removal: Dragging to the Trashcan

That's how I remove devices on my own Mac systems, since it's so darn easy, even if it's a bit confusing to people who haven't tried it before.

Option two, however, is a bit more logical if you're still jumpy about dragging your device to the trash. Ctrl-click on the device icon instead, and check out the options that appear:

Mac OS X: USB Device Drive Removal: Ctrl-Clicking to Eject

As highlighted, you want to choose "Eject" and you're done.

Either way, these both give you easy options to eject any sort of USB disk drive, digital camera, personal media player, or similar.

Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Stumble Upon

Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

Another option is to the go to the Finder window and click on the arrow next to the device

Posted by: Ras at January 26, 2008 2:21 PM

Dave, great job in putting together this list of instructions. I cannot stress enough to my clients, how important it is to safely remove a device from their system. Even if it is just a USB drive and may seem a bit tedious, it sure beats losing 1GB of precious data. It happened to me... I had to learn the hard way.

Posted by: Monchster at February 14, 2008 8:23 PM

For some reason, the icon for my Memorex mini travel drive is not showing up on my computer when I plug it into the USB port, so I can't access the info on it. But when I pull it out (b/c there's no icon to drag to trash and it doesn't acknowledge it under File), I still get that message that I removed it improperly. Please help!!

Posted by: LindaL at March 4, 2008 8:01 PM

For some reason mine gives the unsafe device removal warning even after I've 'ejected' the drive in finder.

If I wait a minute or so _after_ the volume is dismounted it no longer throws the warning, but for some reason it still seems to see the device as plugged in.

Posted by: Morgan at March 23, 2008 3:52 PM

I seem to have that problem as well. Maybe my Mac is so old (Pismo) it just takes a long time for it write back. Does this sound right? No matter whether I ctrl-click and "Eject" or drag to the Trash, I still get the message even after waiting. One thing I have noticed on my USB memory stick it that with a PC the light on the stick will go out after it has been "Ejected" and on the Mac it always stays on (with a slight flicker).

Posted by: Jon Roper at July 20, 2008 12:11 PM

I cannot seem to find the option that says: "safely remove from computer," after i have finished using my usb and there is no eject option either in my computer. what is wrong, and what should i do? please email me with the answer if possible at wolmerstarpowerforward@yahoo.com

Posted by: ADRI at November 28, 2008 7:13 PM

I've always been a fan of keyboard shortcuts. Using them helps me produce my work easier and faster. For ejecting a usb or disc, highlight the icon and press Command(Apple key) and E.

Posted by: Kim at January 27, 2009 8:00 PM

I abandoned my new iMac Leopard Mouse and now use a Logitec mouse that has two buttons plus a scroll wheel. Now alll I do is right click on the desktop icon for the device to be removed and it comes up with the eject device box, click it with the left button and it is ejected. I have been using a PC for too long to do things without tha right click button.

Posted by: Douglas Rees at July 7, 2009 11:18 PM

I am having problems ejecting my VADO camera device. I accidently pulled out the plug before it was safe to do so. So now I get the message that The disk "VADO" is in use and could not be ejected. Try quitting applications and try again.

Ok, so what "application"? I tried turning my computer off and pulling out the plug but then when I tried to download some movies off the VADO it wouldn't work.

So what can I do?

Thanks for any help.

Posted by: Ramona W at July 25, 2009 11:28 PM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!