Got a file open?

When my laptop at work refuses to eject my garmin I just leave it plunged in until the end of the day, once I've turned the laptop off I just unplug it then, doesn't seem to have done any harm.

That message usually pops up when you've a pluggable drive (which the storage on GPS devices is seen as) connected and the computer goes into standby. This powers down most of the systems including the external drives. Since you haven't told the computer that you've ejected the drive when you bring the computer out of standby it "sees" that the drive is now missing.

It's a safety mechanism, as Jam bo says, if you've a file open and you've edited it then pulling out the drive could corrupt that file. If you haven't edited or changed anything on the drive then it doesn't matter and you can just dismiss the warning. On some systems there may be a hidden system file called a lock file left behind but I've not seen that problem on Macs.

Don’t think I’ve safely ejected a device since god knows when and it doesn’t seem to done have any harm? Didn’t realise people actually ejected them safely

voodoo_simon wrote: ↑Sat Mar 07, 2020 10:00 am Don’t think I’ve safely ejected a device since god knows when and it doesn’t seem to done have any harm? Didn’t realise people actually ejected them safely

Yep, life is too short. Probably last used caution in the Windows XP era.

When I connect my garmin, my Mac sees two drives; GPS and SD card, which is usually called “no name”. I eject both before disconnecting the device.

I have corrupted a card before now not ejecting properly. It doesn’t exactly take long to do.

Also, disk writes can be cached in a buffer and not actually written/completed until the buffer is cleared by an eject.

Thanks all, I'm going to try again, I've tried ejecting many different ways....the only thing that's helped is shutting down the computer. I'll try some more of your tips later today :)

Drag the gps icon on the desktop into the bin(which will turn into an old school eject symbol as you do). Once the icon disappears from the desktop it’s ejected, you can then just pull it out. This applies to any ext drive/sad card etc.

Had an instance of this earlier this evening; wouldn’t eject disc as it was “in use”. All apps were closed, but I opened up Activity Monitor and found Preview was running in the background. Quit that process, and bingo - disc ejected.

Cheers Ian. Going to play with this another day, left my Garmin in work!! Doh.

When I connect my garmin, my Mac sees two drives; GPS and SD card, which is usually called “no name”. I eject both before disconnecting the device.

Exactly this. Any Garmin shows up twice on my Mac.