After all typical solutions tried, still can't eject disks

same store - can't eject external hard disks, but none of the solutions I have come across have worked. Running Sequoia 15.1.1 I've run the terminal process "sudo lsof | grep \[volume name here\] to isolate that it is mds and mds\_store keeping my disks from ejecting. I've gone to System Settings>Spotlight>Privacy and added these drives to the "do not index" list or whatever. Doesn't work. I've gone to Activity Monitor and killed mds and mds\_store. They just come right back. So that doesn't work. I've waited days in hopes the indexing would just finish. That hasn't worked. I've tried relaunching Finder. That hasn't worked. I've tried `sudo kill -9 [PID #] and that didn't work.` What in God's name is going on? I don't mind force ejecting now and then, but every time I mount these drives - it feels like that's asking too much of them. What is going on macOS? Anyone have any insight?