Unmount a Drive

Windows XP, Vista and Linux allow you to unmount optical drives, virtual drives, and network shares. This article explains how to unmount a drive in Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP, as well as Linux and Mac OS X.

Steps

Using Windows XP, Vista or Window 7 via Disk Management

  1. Open the Computer Management application. Click Start.
  2. Type "run" on the search box.
  3. Click on "run" under programs.
  4. Type in "compmgmt.msc".
  5. Click ok to run computer management.
  6. Select Disk Management. It's located in the left-hand pane of the Computer Management window.
  7. Select the drive. Right-click on the drive or partition that you want to unmount.
  8. Choose Change Drive Letters and Paths… from the context menu.
  9. Unmount the drive. Select the mounted drive that you wish to remove and click Remove.
  10. Answer Yes when prompted to remove the drive path.
  11. Quit the Disk Management console.

Unmounting a Drive Mounted to a Folder in Windows via the Command Line

  1. Click on the Windows button on the bottom left of your screen.
  2. Start typing cmd into the "Start search" box on the bottom near the button.
  3. Click on the cmd under programs.
  4. Unmount the drive. Type “mountvol Path /d” where “Path” is the folder that the drive is mounted to.

Unmounting a Drive in Linux

  1. Open a shell. From the Linux GUI, press Ctrl + Alt + F1 to open up a Shell.
    • Alternatively, you can select Terminal from your System Tools.
  2. Unmount the drive. Type “umount /dev/partitionID” in the Shell command line, where partitionID is the ID of the partition you wish to unmount.

Unmounting in Mac OS X

  1. Unmount the drive. Right click on the drive and select "Eject" from the contextual menu.
    • Alternately you can drag to the trash the icon of the drive you wish to unmount.

Tips

  • Sometimes, when you are trying to unmount a drive in Linux, you will receive a message that the drive is busy. You can find out which application is currently using the drive by opening up a Terminal or Shell window and entering the following command: “lsof +D /mnt/windows”. This will let you know which process needs to be closed out of or killed so you can successfully unmount the drive.
  • Removing a mounted drive does not delete any information in the folder, it simple unmounts the drive.
  • The Linux unmount command can be used to unmount floppy drives, USB flash drives, file partitions and CD drives. The syntax of the command when you are unmounting media is slightly different. For example, to unmount a CD drive, you would enter the command “umount /media/cdrom” in the Shell or Terminal command line.

Warnings

  • Take note that the command for unmounting a drive in Linux is UMOUNT, not UNMOUNT.
  • Whether you are using Linux or Windows, it is smart to unmount a USB thumb drive before unplugging it from the USB port. This ensures that you don’t experience any data loss when unplugging the drive. Unmount in Linux using the above command. Unmount in Windows by right-clicking on the Remove Hardware Safely icon in your taskbar and choosing to stop the USB drive.

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Sources and Citations

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