Removing a thumb or travel drive

[Joe McGuire]

WHen I try to remove a thumb drive (after clicking on the little icon in the
tray and selecting the drive to be removed) I get an error message to the
effect that "The device 'generic volume' cannot be stopped right now. Try
stopping the device again later." I have closed any files I had had open on
the device. Is something perhaps running without my knowledge? What harm
can come of just removing the device? thanks!

 

[BillW50]

In Joe McGuire typed on Sat, 30 May 2009 14:19:38 -0400:

WHen I try to remove a thumb drive (after clicking on the little icon
in the tray and selecting the drive to be removed) I get an error
message to the effect that "The device 'generic volume' cannot be
stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later." I have
closed any files I had had open on the device. Is something perhaps
running without my knowledge? What harm can come of just removing
the device? thanks!

Hi Joe! While tempting, best not to pull the drive out anyway. While my
experience this is rare, but you could scramble the disk. If you don't
care, well then that is okay then. But if you do care, try the free
program called Unlocker.

Once installed, just right click on the drive under Explorer and chose
Unlocker from the context menu. And it will tell you what applications
and files are holding things up. And it gives you the option to unlock
the applications from the drive or files. Then you are free to remove
the hardware thing.

Unlocker (free)
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

 

[Bob]

Shut down your PC and then remove it.

 

[ToddAndMargo]

In Joe McGuire typed on Sat, 30 May 2009 14:19:38 -0400:

Hi Joe! While tempting, best not to pull the drive out anyway. While my
experience this is rare, but you could scramble the disk. If you don't
care, well then that is okay then. But if you do care, try the free
program called Unlocker.

Once installed, just right click on the drive under Explorer and chose
Unlocker from the context menu. And it will tell you what applications
and files are holding things up. And it gives you the option to unlock
the applications from the drive or files. Then you are free to remove
the hardware thing.

Unlocker (free)
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

Hi Joe,

Unlocker is how I track file locks down as well. If
in doubt, you can always shutdown and remove it.

Presuming you do not have a file manager or a file
open on your thumb drive, two of the main causes I
have come up with are

1) someone trying to defragment your thumb drive,
such as Diskeeper

2) your antivirus is scanning your thumb drive
(Kaspersky automatically scans when you insert
a thumb drive)

HTH,
-T

 

[Jose]

WHen I try to remove a thumb drive (after clicking on the little icon in the
tray and selecting the drive to be removed) I get an error message to the
effect that "The device 'generic volume' cannot be stopped right now.  Try
stopping the device again later."  I have closed any files I had had open on
the device.  Is something perhaps running without my knowledge?  Whatharm
can come of just removing the device?  thanks!

This can happen if you are accessing a file on the drive with some
program and that program fails to close properly. Frequent offenders
- audio/video files, Office documents (Word, Excel, etc.).

You would be best served by figuring out what happened and taking
steps to keep it from happening again.

To help figure out and understand what is happening, download,
install, run Process Explorer and examine your open storage devices:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

You can determine the exact name of the file on the drive that is open
and also the name of the program that has it open or did not close it
properly (wmplayer.exe is a good one).

There will be no shutting down, no guesswork, etc. once you know what
is going on.

It was mentioned that AV software can cause this and so can indexing
on the drive, both of which can be disabled for that device.

 

[BillW50]

In
Jose typed on Mon, 1 Jun 2009 13:07:25 -0700 (PDT):

To help figure out and understand what is happening, download,
install, run Process Explorer and examine your open storage devices:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

I run Process Explore too. Although Unlocker takes all of the guesswork
out of it and allows you to unlock the drive regardless of what it is.

Unlocker (free)
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

 

[smlunatick]

Hi Joe,

Unlocker is how I track file locks down as well.  If
in doubt, you can always shutdown and remove it.

Presuming you do not have a file manager or a file
open on your thumb drive, two of the main causes I
have come up with are

1) someone trying to defragment your thumb drive,
    such as Diskeeper

2) your antivirus is scanning your thumb drive
    (Kaspersky automatically scans when you insert
    a thumb drive)

HTH,
-T

Third cause: Roxio's "Drag to Disk" or Nero's 'InCD" can take over
the thumb flash drive.

 

[BillW50]

In Joe McGuire typed on Sat, 30 May 2009 14:19:38 -0400:

WHen I try to remove a thumb drive (after clicking on the little icon
in the tray and selecting the drive to be removed) I get an error
message to the effect that "The device 'generic volume' cannot be
stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later." I have
closed any files I had had open on the device. Is something perhaps
running without my knowledge? What harm can come of just removing
the device? thanks!

No Joe, don't just pull it out as the file(s) could become corrupt.
Download Unlocker and it will unlock the drive and tell you what has
file(s) opened.

Unlocker (free)
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/