How to safely eject USB hard drive

this is bloody annoying, I am using Vista and it will not let me remove my usb hard drive safely.

I do not have any programs open that are using the external hard drive but there are handlers open which belong to the operating system. How to I get rid of these.

I used unlocker, removedrive and ejectUSB. They are of no help. I have indexing turned off, system restore off for the drive, readyboost turned off, no recycle bin links to the external hard drive.
I still cannot figure out why the handlers exist in the external drive. The drive has two partitions. I attached images of the handlers.


Any help will be much appreciated.

Yudi

 

As long as you dont pull it out while its active, it wont matter anyway, so it isnt a big deal

 

use this:
http://mysite.verizon.net/kaakoon/hotswap/index_enu.htm

Make sure you have no paging to that disk.

 

You may not think you have any files or programs open, but apparently Vista DOES. Why don't you try this. . . First check Task Manager to see if it shows that any USB files/programs are open. If so, of course check End Process to officially close that file/program. If Task Manager doesn't see anything open, go into your Start menu's Recent Items list, select the most recent item opened from the USB hard drive, and with that file open, go back into Task Manager. Highlight that file in Task Manager and “End Process.” Then go to Windows Explorer and you should be able to remove your USB drive with the Safely Remove link or Eject. You may have to repeat this process several times, each time selecting the next most recent item in the Recent Items list.

 

Isn't it safe to remove when the compter is off?

 

Did you turn on write cache on it? Try turn it off then.

 

I just unplug the beast when the lights stop flashing.

 

Go to Device Manager > Right-click on the external HD

Select the performance policy that favours quick removal over greater performance. Usually this is the default setting with external HDs as it allows you to just unplug the drive when it stops reading/writing.

 

^ I agree with Bog's advice.

Even with that option set to quick removal, I still can't get the "safely remove hardware" thing to work. But... it does make it very unlikely that you'll have any problems with just pulling out the cord... as long as you wait till it's done writing to the external drive and then wait a couple more seconds first.

 

What about removing it when the computer is off?

Isn't that 100% safe?

 

Yup!

Or just wait for the light to stop flashing. Just like the old floppies!

 

You have to go to Start>Devices & Printers (on the right)> right click on whatever it is, then safely remove hardware. I use this to "eject" my external HDD.

 

Nothing is safe in this world anymore. So, just unplug it when the activity has stopped

 

Thanks guys

I changed the option on the hard drive to quick removal and it worked couple of times. I hope it does in the future too.

I am moving all my systems to Linux and hope I will not have to deal with this in the future.

 

In Linux, things become a little more old-school. You'll have to unmount devices (a device must be "attached"/mounted to the filesystem in order to be used) manually before removing them, otherwise you'll get errors the next time you try to mount that same device. Still, you don't need to worry much about data loss.

 

just yank it out any 'ol time...i always do never had a problem.

 

Just like the old floppy and zip drives. That's how it's done!

 

I'll let my daughter show you how to do it. Basically anytime she sees something plugged into my computer she feels it is her given duty to rip it out.

So far nothing bad has happened

 

too funny

 

Yeah, wait until she does that to your external HDD full of important docs from work.

 

Now i see why you own a laptop At least it can run on battery lol