External Drive won't dismount

[Anne Keller-Smith]

Hi,

Lately when I drag the Maxtor external drive to the trash, I get
an error message that says "The operation could  not be completed
because the disk "Anne's Maxtor OneTouch" is in use." Also, the
icon changes from a gold color to the generic HD icon.

After a minute, sometimes the icon does disappear, but then
when I turn off  the drive, it says I have not done things correctly,
may have lost data, and should have selected the icon and selected
"eject" from the file menu. But if I do this, it also gives me the
above message.

If I reboot with the drive mounted, it seems to regain its
yellow icon, and ejects properly.

My first thought was that Retrospect might not have been
quite done with the backup, but the program had quit already,
was not open any more.

What's up with this? Any thoughts? Right now I want to
quit for the day and turn the computer off, but my impression
is I need to eject the external drive and turn it off before
shutting down. Also, if I reboot, what does that do? Does
that mess up the external drive as well?

Mac G4, Jaguar. Many thanks in advance for any ideas!

Anne Keller Smith
Down to Earth Web Design
G4 733mHz (OS X.2/Classic) | Graphite iBook 333mHz (OS 9.0.2)
mailto:earthpigz at earthlink.net
http://www.downtoearthweb.com