Failed unmounting and "Device not configured"

Mikuro

Mikuro

Crotchety UI Nitpicker
An annoying problem has cropped up today. Whenever I unplug my FireWire HD, it tells me that I disconnected it without properly unmounting it. This happens sometimes even if I wait a minute or so after ejecting the volume and waiting for the icon to disappear from the desktop.

After that, there's still a "ghost" entry for the volume in my /Volumes folder. I say "ghost" because it doesn't show up in the Finder, but I can see it in Terminal. If I try to do anything with it in Terminal, like rm it, I get the error message "Device not configured". (Edit: Actually, it does sometimes appear in the Finder, but as soon as I select it, it disappears.)

Since the old mount point still remains as the ghost, the next time I mount the disk it will have a different mount point. A lot of programs just can't cope with this.

So, first of all, does anyone know why my disk won't unmount all the way? And secondly, is there any way, short of restarting, to get rid of this 'ghost' item in /Volumes?
 
I am not sure you are experiencing the same problem I had, but, it sounds similar. I installed a program onto my external HD, that was not specifically running, but was like on stand-by. So the system was expected to find the app on the external HD. When I would eject the disk, it did the same thing, until I deselected it from my start-up items.
 
Well, I certainly don't have any startup items on the disk, or even any applications. I use it primarily for backups and video.

I've used it a couple times since yesterday with no problems, so maybe it fixed itself. From now on, I guess I'll just check with Terminal before unplugging the drive to be sure the mount point is gone. A bit of a hassle, but it's better than having to restart.
 
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