Cannot safely remove portable hdd

Hello, first post here!

Unsurprisingly, I have a problem safely removing a portable 320gb NTFS hdd (S:\ ) on Vista Premium.

I checked the drive with a prog called 'unlocker' and it seems that svchost.exe is locking certain files. eg:

S:\system volume information\tracking.log
S:\
S:\$extend$\$objid

Tried a couple of formats and they didn't help. As soon as I did a bit of work with them (open, saves, deletes etc.) the same thing occured.

So far the only thing that's guaranteed to work is to shut down the laptop.

I wish I could use Fat32 but it would take 2 partitions and I wouldn't be able to format within Vista or the native XP format.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

u would suggest you to have a hard disk cleaner run on hdd which will help you to clean registry of your hdd

I was also facing such king of issue i tried to have a Virus Scan and it worked for me hope it will work for you too.

To configure drive for quick removal, Open Device Manager, expand "Disk drives" node, double click drive in question, on the Policies tab make sure "Optimize for quick removal" radio-button is checked. This will slow down file operations on the drive but will allow you to remove it at any moment without even using (sometimes failing) "Safe Removal" function.

svchost.exe is a target for malware.

You need all 3 of these programs: AVG antispyware, Ad-Aware and Spybot.

AVG Anti-Spyware
http://free.avg.com/download-avg-ant...d-anti-rootkit

Ad-Aware
http://www.lavasoft.de/

Spybot Search & Destroy 1.6.2
http://www.filehippo.com/download_sp...earch_destroy/

For more information on svchost.exe please go to:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sec...ry/927891.mspx

deoWo:
I know the quick removal option, but was hoping to see why Vista was not releasing it first.

Myron:
It's nor a virus as it exhibited the same behaviour after a fresh install of Vista on a new hdd.

rawko:
I never use reg cleaners. I'd never recommend anyone else use them either.