Cannot erase, partition, or unmount volume on external HD

[MamaMoose]

I have 500 GB Lacie Hard Drive with three volumes on it. Two of the volumes can be mounted or unmounted as well as erased using Disk Utilities. However, one of the volumes, say A, won't unmount, won't erase, and stays stubbornly on the desktop no matter what I do. Also, the drive itself cannot be unmounted except by turning off the power. Vol A is the backup to my boot drive and therefore is important. This problem arose when I tried to backup using SuperDuper! and it failed.

I get error messages such as "error volume (drive) cannot be unmounted or volume cannot be unmounted because it is currently in use. !!  So I searched Activity Monitor thinking that I might see what was in use. No such luck. SuperDuper!  has a nasty habit of leaving behind some software that is linked to the current system. Sometimes when I perform a task, the backup drive spins up indicating the boot and backup are linked.  I wonder if this is the problem.

I tried to use DiskWarrior on Vol. A but got an error message saying, 'DW failed as it could not unmount volume".

When I select Verify Disk in Disk Utilities, it checks out as good!

So I am at my wits end. Does anyone know of a way to get the volume off the desktop, or erase the entire drive, or unmount the drive or volume A? Perhaps, I have to go into Terminal and use Unix to solve this problem. I haven't tried booting from the install disk. Might that work?

Thanks for any ideas,

MamaMoose

[sandbox]

Shut down the computer, shut down the drive, turn on the drive and do a safe-boot.
That should let you startup without anything running from the second drive. Look at what's running in activities, try to find what changes when your in normal mode.


Try to boot to another partition on the other drive if you can, or boot to a install CD to erase the partition if you have to. You can then replace the backup using another utility like CCC or SilverKeeper. Lacie does make a good backup utility. ;-)

[sandbox]

Ops

QUOTE

Special note for people upgrading to Leopard:
v1.1.4 of SilverKeeper is not compatible with OS X 10.5.x, Leopard. LaCie does not recommend using SilverKeeper v1.1.4 with Leopard. A fix is being investigated.

http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/

[gunug]

Thanks Sandbox.  I have a problem with a volume that was on an external USB hard drive; it seemed to be read only and I tried lots of things but I didn't try what you suggested.  I'll give it a shot tonight!

[tacit]

QUOTE(gunug @ Aug 21 2008, 12:54 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks Sandbox.  I have a problem with a volume that was on an external USB hard drive; it seemed to be read only and I tried lots of things but I didn't try what you suggested.  I'll give it a shot tonight!

If you have an external hard drive that is showing up as read only, 99.9% of the time that means it is formatted for Windows PCs using NTFS. An NTFS drive can be read, but not written, by standard Mac OS X. You ned to re-format the drive for Mac.

[Paddy]

Further to SB's suggestion - you can find out what processes are running on the volume and refusing to let it unmount by going into the Terminal and typing:

sudo lsof /Volumes/"drive-name"

Put the name of the volume in, but keep the quotes. You'll be asked for your admin password, enter it and then you should get a list.

You could also try turning off Spotlight - it may be the culprit. Go into the System Prefs->Spotlight and select the Privacy tab. Then click on the add button and put the entire external drive in - or just the problematic volume. OR simply kill Spotlight in the Activity Monitor.

More info here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?m...18&#7296218

(They suggest re-indexing...not stopping the process.)

[RNKIII]

QUOTE(Paddy @ Aug 21 2008, 08:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You could also try turning off Spotlight - it may be the culprit. Go into the System Prefs->Spotlight and select the Privacy tab. Then click on the add button and put the entire external drive in - or just the problematic volume. OR simply kill Spotlight in the Activity Monitor.

And if you do this... check it on a regular basis, as I have done this particular step/process a number of times and, for some reason, Tiger keeps removing the externals that I don't want searched from the 'do not search' list??

Bob K.   rnkiii