Hi all
Many times when I come to 'Safely Remove Hardware' (USB pen drive) it is
reported as in use (when it is not) and will not allow me to stop/eject
the drive.
Explorer is closed and no apps that I can see are accessing the pen
drive... (indexing?).
I end up pulling it out anyway ;-)
An annoying bug - does not do this with XP either.
Guy
I often get this with my external hard drive. Seem to have this problem a
hell of a lot more with Vista than I did with XP.
Windows needs to be able to identify/detect what is using the drives if
that's possible.
Among the other programs that may be using the drive without your being
aware of it are the Recycle Bin and System Restore...
Ahh, I guess Microsft never thought of that! ;-)
A truly poor piece of programming...
Restoring the Safely Remove Hardware Icon
So, tell me, has your Safely Remove Hardware icon ever disappeared from
your system tray? You know, the icon you use to safely disconnect your
USB devices. Even though your device is still plugged in, the icon is
gone and you're left stranded without a safe way to remove it. So, what
do you do? Well, most people go ahead and pull the device out on their
own, but that's really not the proper way to do it. Doing that can cause
severe damage to your hardware. Luckily, there's an easy way to get your
Safely Remove Hardware icon back up and running. Try this!
To restore your Safely Remove Hardware icon, go to your Start menu,
right click on it and choose Properties.
Next, click on the Taskbar tab at the top of the dialogue window.
Once you've done that, click on the Customize button.
In the Customize Notification(s) dialogue box, scroll down until you
come across the Safely Remove Hardware option. Next, click on the down
arrow next to it and select Always Show. Then click OK.
The Safely Remove Hardware icon will then reappear in your system tray
and you can go back to removing your hardware the right way. Oh yeah!
--
Art
I notice when you simply click the eject notification area icon you will get
this message, whether its a thumb drive or external usb hard disk. What I
do, is to double click the eject icon which will bring up the eject dialog,
select the storage device and click 'stop'. If that does not work, I will
try a log out and log back in. Its definitely a problem I have been noticing
as far back as Windows 2000. There is no way to tell the device to let go of
what ever its doing.
I'll tell you when it is definitely a problem. If the device is a thumb
drive you will rarely get the thumb drive corrupted and you can always go
back to the source and get what was on the thumb. Ipods or Apple little
devices almost never.
But if you do this enough times with an external hard drive and you've
backed up significant files and folders to it, you may find that hd
corrupted, and unless you're a recovery expert and have the expensive tools
and odds are you aren't, people want $1500-$1700 bucks to recover them.
There are videos on the web that may or may not work for you.
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