External USB HD can't be removed safely

[Jay Moore]

Hi,

I just bought a WD Passport 320gb external USB hard drive. It works fine
EXCEPT, I can try to safely remove and it tells me the drive is still in
use. There's no explorer processes running...I can safely remove my microSD
cards just fine. I already checked to make sure system restore was disabled
for that drive. Indexing is also disabled. But regardless of what I do,
Vista insists that drive is in use when it's not.

I really don't wanna pull the plug or reboot EVERY TIME I want to remove
this because i'd spend more time waiting for this trainwreck to boot up and
shut down.

XP does not have this behavior.

 

[Earle Horton]

Anti-virus program?
Paging turned on for that drive?
Do you have a window open on the drive? XP would gladly close such a window
when you asked to remove a drive, but Vista would not.
Any third party apps that might have a file open?

Earle

 

[Opinicus]

Anti-virus program?
Paging turned on for that drive?
Do you have a window open on the drive? XP would gladly close such a
window when you asked to remove a drive, but Vista would not.
Any third party apps that might have a file open?

I'm using a WD MyBook 500 gb external USB hard drive and have been having
that problem now with increasing frequency. The culprit (I just caught it in
the act a few minutes ago) is a program called "svchost.exe".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svchost

 

[Jay Moore]

Checked that.
Nope.
Nope, no windows open.
No applications open whatsoever.

 

[Jay Moore]

I'm using a WD MyBook 500 gb external USB hard drive and have been having
that problem now with increasing frequency. The culprit (I just caught it
in the act a few minutes ago) is a program called "svchost.exe".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svchost

that is about as useless as saying "my car stopped running, turns out it
needs gas"

 

[Gary M]

The meaning of "safe to remove device" for external USB drives is that any
data written to the drive has truly finished being written, the cache has
been flushed and no data lose will take place when you unplug the drive.
If you are certain that writing to the drive is finished, then it is
probably safe to unplug the drive, after at least once using the safely
remove device utility.
Logging off, by my experience, should be sufficient to flush the cache and
allowing you to "safely" remove the drive.

Sometimes I log off and log back on and the safe to remove drive now works.
I would not bother to reboot the computer, unless I had some very special
important data that I could no take any risk whatsoever that I might lose it
and I don't have it backed up anywhere else.

 

[Clark]

Hi,

I just bought a WD Passport 320gb external USB hard drive. It works fine
EXCEPT, I can try to safely remove and it tells me the drive is still in
use. There's no explorer processes running...I can safely remove my
microSD cards just fine. I already checked to make sure system restore
was disabled for that drive. Indexing is also disabled. But regardless
of what I do, Vista insists that drive is in use when it's not.

I really don't wanna pull the plug or reboot EVERY TIME I want to remove
this because i'd spend more time waiting for this trainwreck to boot up
and shut down.

XP does not have this behavior.

Go to device manager and look at the properties of the drive under
Policies and read those options. If it is external, you should have an
option, but if not the explanation under quick removal should help.

Clark

 

[MLD]

Hi,

I just bought a WD Passport 320gb external USB hard drive. It works fine
EXCEPT, I can try to safely remove and it tells me the drive is still in
use. There's no explorer processes running...I can safely remove my
microSD cards just fine. I already checked to make sure system restore was
disabled for that drive. Indexing is also disabled. But regardless of what
I do, Vista insists that drive is in use when it's not.

I really don't wanna pull the plug or reboot EVERY TIME I want to remove
this because i'd spend more time waiting for this trainwreck to boot up
and shut down.

I have the same drive (Passport Essential), using Vista Home Premium. Every
once in a while I get the same message. So far, I go through the motion of
making sure that nothing is open or running and then I get the OK to remove
the drive--once in a while I have to go through this a couple of times.
MLD

 

[Nate Grossman]

I have the same drive (Passport Essential), using Vista Home Premium. Every
once in a while I get the same message. So far, I go through the motion of
making sure that nothing is open or running and then I get the OK to remove
the drive--once in a while I have to go through this a couple of times.
MLD

I just yank it. I don't worry about "safely remove".

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

that is about as useless as saying "my car stopped running, turns out it
needs gas"

No, it's more useless.

Svchost is a utility that runs a large number of different programs...

It's closer to saying that "my car stopped running, turns out it needs
something"

 

[Jay Moore]

Figured it out.

If you boot the system with the HDD plugged up, the BIOS detects it and
Windows picks it up as a non removable drive.

If you plug it up after the fact, it's fine.