Mac – How to eject a Time Machine drive quickly

external-disktime-machine

I have a Time Machine drive for my laptop…

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I bring the machine to work. Every morning I right-click "Eject" the drive, and it takes forever or just doesn't eject.

I'm in a hurry, so I either sudo /sbin/shutdown -h now or if I'm really in a rush just yank the drive (then get scolded by the OS when I log back in later).

What would be a better way?


MacBook Pro mid 2012 ; OS 10.12.1 (Sierra)

Best Answer

There is a 3rd party app named Mountain that gives you control over all your connected volumes. It's not free, selling for $7 but they have a free trial period so you can test drive it. Mountain creates a menu item that user can use to mount, unmount, eject or load volumes. I can't guarantee it is faster than your method but I use it to mount or unmount stubborn drives.