Ejecting mount drives manually in Mac OSX

Updated 5 April 2008: < > disappeared so its replaced by | |
Updated 31 May 2008: Added the force command, and link it to Leopard post

I'm not sure if its only me, but I frequently have trouble dismounting mount drives in the Mac, be it a thumbdrive, server directory, or even a DMG package. The frustration of clicking on the eject arrow and nothing happening is irritating. I have finally found out how to eject the drive manually from the command line in the Mac OSX.

To do that, do the following:

1. Launch the application Terminal. You can find it in the Applications folder, or Spotlight
2. Type ls /Volumes/. You should see the mount drive name in this directory.
   
3. To eject the drive, type hdiutil eject /Volumes/|mount drive name| (e.g. hdiutil eject /Volumes/Thumbdrive)
   

That's all to it. It can save you from rebooting your Mac. :D

For those who wish to force eject the mount drive, add a -force behind the command in step 3.