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