[[ This message was both posted and mailed: see
the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]

In article ,
AES/newspost wrote:

> My laptop-based office setup (an iBook still on OS 9.2) includes one of
> those LaCie 120 GB FireWire HDs that you can't turn off with the "power
> switch" on the HD. When I want to disconnect my laptop from the system
> to take it home or on a trip I have to first drag the HD icon to the
> trash, then unplug the FireWire connection.
>
> On some occasions dragging the HD to the trash produces a message that
> the HD can't be disconnected because something on it (unspecified as to
> what) is in use. This doesn't seem to go away with time; no
> applications or utilities are in fact running, at least not visibly; and
> if I go ahead and disconnect the FireWire cable anyway, the laptop
> system is left in a big mess, with a FireWire dialog box that won't go
> away.
>
> Advice on what to do when this happens?

I have to logout and login again, although there may be better ways.
Don't continue doing what you are doing, especially under Panther.

In comp.sys.mac.system AES/newspost wrote:

> Advice on what to do when this happens?

Shut down your Mac and disconnect the disk drive.

AES/newspost wrote:

> On some occasions dragging the HD to the trash produces a message that
> the HD can't be disconnected because something on it (unspecified as to
> what) is in use. This doesn't seem to go away with time; no
> applications or utilities are in fact running, at least not visibly; and
> if I go ahead and disconnect the FireWire cable anyway, the laptop
> system is left in a big mess, with a FireWire dialog box that won't go
> away.
>
> Advice on what to do when this happens?

Try using lsof(8) to find out which process is using a file on
the drive and kill(1) it - or forcibly unmount it with "umount -f".

Ian Gregory
Systems and Applications Manager
Learning and Information Services
University of Hertfordshire

In article <251020031224128365%tosh@newsfeed.com>, Toshiro
wrote:

> [[ This message was both posted and mailed: see
> the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
>
> In article ,
> AES/newspost wrote:
>
> > My laptop-based office setup (an iBook still on OS 9.2) includes one of
> > those LaCie 120 GB FireWire HDs that you can't turn off with the "power
> > switch" on the HD. When I want to disconnect my laptop from the system
> > to take it home or on a trip I have to first drag the HD icon to the
> > trash, then unplug the FireWire connection.
> >
> > On some occasions dragging the HD to the trash produces a message that
> > the HD can't be disconnected because something on it (unspecified as to
> > what) is in use. This doesn't seem to go away with time; no
> > applications or utilities are in fact running, at least not visibly; and
> > if I go ahead and disconnect the FireWire cable anyway, the laptop
> > system is left in a big mess, with a FireWire dialog box that won't go
> > away.
> >
> > Advice on what to do when this happens?
>
> I have to logout and login again, although there may be better ways.
> Don't continue doing what you are doing, especially under Panther.

It is probably some disk utility software that you have running "in the
background". Something like a cataloger or virus detector or a file
saver generating an alternate master directory on the disk. \Norton
System and programs like that install them and these are not actually
applications per se so they are not displayed on your dock.

As Toshiro said, logging out puts a stop to things like this... usually.

AES/newspost writes:
>
> On some occasions dragging the HD to the trash produces a message
> that the HD can't be disconnected because something on it
> (unspecified as to what) is in use. This doesn't seem to go away
> with time; no applications or utilities are in fact running, at
> least not visibly; and if I go ahead and disconnect the FireWire
> cable anyway, the laptop system is left in a big mess, with a
> FireWire dialog box that won't go away.

Don't just unplug the drive. MacOS keeps data in cache whenever the
drive is mounted on the desktop. If you unplug the drive, that data
won't be written to the disk. You will end up with some corruption
on the drive, and disk repair utilities may not be able to repair the
damage.

When you see this message, some program (possibly running in the
background) has an open file on the drive. You have to terminate
this program before you can unmount the drive.

If you can't find this program, logging out and back in should kill
the program.

If that doesn't work, you may be forced to perform a shutdown.

As one other person mentioned, if you're comfortable with the command
line, you might be able to use the lsof command to identify the
program that's using the drive and the kill command to terminate it.

-- David