This has been an ongoing problem. When booted from an external clone, Disk Warrior tells me that it cannot unmount the internal drive in order to rebuild the directory because that volume is "in use". This occurs with Carbon Copy Cloner clones and SuperDuper clones. I have erased a CCC clone and re-cloned from scratch, with the same result. If I try to boot from the DW flash drive, I get the prohibited sign and the computer boots from the internal drive. Using DW's instructions on how to use it when booted into Recovery Mode, via Terminal, gives me the message that there is "no such directory".

In the past, with this computer, there has been no issue either with a clone or with the DW flash drive.

How do I unmount the internal while booted from the clone? Disk Utility will not allow me to do this unless I opt to force-eject, which I would rather not do. I have looked in Activity Monitor to see which process is using the internal, but I don't know what to look for.

Any and all advice would be appreciated.

PS: I can use DW to rebuild the directory of the clones while booted from the internal. No problems.

ADDENDUM: I also tried switching the default startup disk to a clone and restarted from that clone with the same result.

I have also run into this. I concluded that when the clone was created there were applications that had files open and/or aliases and links to files on Macintosh HD. I cloned the system to a volume named "Clone" but those links still pointed to Macintosh HD. When I booted from the Clone volume those aliases still pointed to Macintosh HD so the system dutifully opened the files on Macintosh HD not on Clone. I can't say for certain, but it would appear this is the result of a subtle change in aliases that occurred in either Sierra or high Sierra. Needless to say it is annoying in the specific context.

Now that you bring it up you might contact Mike Bombich and see if he is aware of this and if CCC could be modified to correct the problem.

Good to know, Joe, and thank you for sharing that information. I will contact Mike Bombich about the problem. When I first installed Sierra, everything worked fine but the problem appeared with subsequent updates.

I've had this problem, too. Sometimes, I can ignore the warning, close and reopen the DW and try again. Sometimes, it works.

Other times, I've removed items from the side bar that might link to your target disk.

Other times, I've rebooted in Safe mode and DW works then.

It's always something different...

I too had a problem similar to Jon’s, e.g, a volume could not be ejected because it was [apparently] still in use. And AFAIK, this was not the case. And thus I force ejected the miscreant volume (without consequence).

After few times of this, I remembered that the volume in question is one I used to copy back a clone to my main volume. At that point, Carbon Copy Cloner alerted me that I now had two volumes with the same UUID.

Fortunately, Carbon Copy Cloner has a free downloadable script that promptly puts things to right. After running that script I no longer have the “this volume can’t be ejected” issue.

But whether/if this can be related to the problem at hand, well, I was afraid you’d ask…

Harv,

Please post a link to that script. I was unable to find it at Bombich's website.

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4/ccc-found-multiple-volumes-same-universally-unique-identifier

Thanks, Harv. I followed the instructions and I'll try it out later, when I have more time. BTW, I solved the problem of using DW from its flash drive. The instructions say to boot into Recovery Mode, access Terminal from the Utilities menu, type /Volumes/DW/go and press Return. When I tried it previously, I had neglected to insert the DW flash drive into a USB port. Duh!!!

Now, it worked fine.

I may have done this wrong, because it didn't work. I used the script to change the UUID of the clone, re-cloned, booted into the clone, and had the same result. Fortunately, I figured out what I did wrong in using the DW flash drive. Booting into Recovery Mode is only slightly less convenient than booting from a clone, so it's all OK with me.

you may be able to open disk utility and Unmount the volume before asking DW to rebuild it. Finder and Disk Utility both seem to have some "added magic" in them for severing links to open files when trying to empty trash.

Bingo! I booted from a clone, told DU to unmount the internal and got a message that it was in use by Core Sync. I then used Activity Monitor to quit Core Sync and succeeded in unmounting the internal. Then, DW worked as it should and re-mounted the internal when it was finished.

As I indicated in my initial post, I had tried DU previously but, for some reason, the message about Core Sync didn't penetrate my thick skull.

Many thanks, V1!

Good to know and glad it worked, but this begs the question, what does Core Sync do? Does quitting it cause a new problem? Does it stop running only while DiskWarrior does its thing and then resume upon re-mounting?

Maybe V1 can supply an answer to what Core Sync does. All I know is that it didn't seem to make any difference when I quit it. Of course, I then re-booted from my internal, so who knows? It may have something to do with Adobe. See this Google search page but much of that is over my head.

V1? Any comments?

I did a search and Core Sync has the following path: /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Sync/CoreSync/Core Sync.app

I have no idea of what it does.

I did an internet search with DuckDuckGo and found lots of threads about Adobe's "Core Sync" (a.k.a. CoreSync.exe) including a definition on GitHub: Core Sync is an elegant Objective-C diff/patch framework for JSON and NSDictionaries.. I also found a Facebook page purporting to be the Core Sync home page (written in Portuguese), and this File.Info page on what Core Sync does — including a Free Computer Check to identify problems with CoreSync.exe. The bulk of the rest of the threads are about problems caused by Core Sync, can I get rid of it?, and how do I get rid of it. There was also a site positing the question "Is Adobe CoreSync malware?" All of those I found are from Windows but as it is distributed with Adobe CS there is no reason to believe the version on the Mac would be any different in function or performance.

Very informative, Joe, unfortunately. It must have been installed when I installed Photoshop CC. A plague on Adobe!

I realize Photoshop is ubiquitous in the market, but if you would like to try something else you might look at Affinity Photo. I am strictly an amateur but Infinity Photo impresses me and Affinity seems serious about challenging Adobe's hegemony.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have no relation, pecuniary or otherwise with Affinity, other than that of customer.

I know about Affinity Photo and have been impressed by its features. I stick with Photoshop because I print many photos and Photoshop allows me to have it control the colors, rather than Apple or Epson software. That, combined with calibrating my display with X-Rite's i1Profiler, allows me to have prints that (virtually) are duplicates of what I see on-screen. I don't know if other photo apps will do this.

CoreSync will sync any files you have in the Adobe cloud. If, for instance, you are using Photoshop and you store images in Adobe's cloud, or you use InDesign and you store settings or styles or fonts or documents in the Adobe cloud, then CoreSync is what copies the files to and from the Adobe cloud servers.

You can disable it in the Adobe Creative Cloud control panel. Go to Preferences -> Creative Cloud and look for the radio buttons under "Sync On/Off". Click the Off radio button.

Here's a screen shot:
https://forums.adobe.com/servlet/JiveSer...19+16.52.01.png

Many thanks, Tacit.

The screen shot was not exactly what I have (no radio buttons but a box to uncheck) but I managed to turn it off. I do not use Adobe cloud at all, so it's fine with me.

EDIT: I just checked Activity Monitor and Core Sync is still listed, even though I disabled it in Adobe CC Preferences.

Huh. I just turned off sync in preferences and noticed exactly the same thing. This stops CoreSync from doing its thing, but it doesn't stop CoreSync from running.

That's incredibly annoying.

Services typically have to stat loaded even when not running. That way if you turn it on, they just start working, they don't have to be LOADED. As a user, you'd need to authenticate as an admin to load a service. If this sort of thing were widely the case, you'd be bombarded by never-ending authentication dialogues.

Check out say, spotlight. Disabling it is easy. But all its parts will still show up in activity monitor. Removing it is an entirely different matter.