But this has been biting me as well.
An ejected Firewire ipod, while still connected will cause a
menu bar clock freeze
menu bar beach ball
time and date not updating
Can’t fast user switch[From Apple – Support – Discussions – Menu Bar Freezes / Crashes …]
Something is obviously amiss with disk mounting and the menubar(?).
grep SystemUIServer /var/log/system.log produces this:
Mar 15 18:00:48 gee5 diskarbitrationd[55]: SystemUIServer [10541]:26119 not responding.