Problems unmounting external hard drive

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shelley

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#15788 8-Sep-2007 14:20

I have an external hard drive connected to XP MCE SP2. Every time I try to use Safely Remove Hardware to unmount it I get a message saying that it can't access the hard drive because a program is using it. I only use the drive for multimedia files so the only programs that should be accessing it are the media players and DOpus file manager. I have used Task Manager to shut down all running players and Dopus but still get the message. Is there any way around this as I only use the drive occasionally and would like to be able to shut down the drive without shutting down the computer. Thanks

freitasm

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#85849 8-Sep-2007 14:23

Check the drive properties and see if it's not marked for indexing.

Also if you are only using it for media and not recording anything, change the properties to allow fast removal - this doesn't require you to "unmount" it first. This is in the Device Manager | Hard Drives.

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shelley

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Wannabe Geek

#85853 8-Sep-2007 16:22

freitasm: Check the drive properties and see if it's not marked for indexing.

Also if you are only using it for media and not recording anything, change the properties to allow fast removal - this doesn't require you to "unmount" it first. This is in the Device Manager | Hard Drives.

Thanks very much freitasm. It turns out it already was set for quick removal, I just never heard of that before. Oh well

freitasm

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#85860 8-Sep-2007 17:26

When set for Quick Removal you should wait until the activity stops for that drive - watch out for the the LED! It makes the drive slower to write because everything is sent directly instead of using a cache on your PC, but makes it available as soon as the LED stops flashing. Then you can just unplug it.

The "Stop" option is only when you have the option set to Optimise for Performance...

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shelley

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#85928 9-Sep-2007 03:57

freitasm: When set for Quick Removal you should wait until the activity stops for that drive - watch out for the the LED! It makes the drive slower to write because everything is sent directly instead of using a cache on your PC, but makes it available as soon as the LED stops flashing. Then you can just unplug it.

The "Stop" option is only when you have the option set to Optimise for Performance...

Now that I know about this I reset the Properties for Max Performance and now the Safely Remove Hardware works; guess you can only have it one way or the other. I was dissapointed at how slowly it wrote when I moved all my files over when I first got the drive.

By the way, can you explain what you meant about not allowing Indexing Service? I have it set not to allow. Does this affect performance or unloading?

shelley

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#85929 9-Sep-2007 04:12

Forget what I said before. The problem has returned. I guess I'll have to decide whether I want fast writing or the ability to shut off without shutting off the computer. Hmm...

vrtual

28 posts

Geek

#86084 10-Sep-2007 14:19

This is an interesting one - on Vista I sometimes have trouble removing a USB memory devices because SOMETHING has open files on them.

I have all windows and apps closed down, and I figured the indexing service only indexes what I've told it to (doesn't it?).

Is there a handy tool (like lsof on *nix) that tells you which process is accessing a particular device?

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shelley

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Wannabe Geek

#86095 10-Sep-2007 14:55

Hey vrtual, thanks for the idea. I Googled lsof and got a reference to Process Explorer for Windows which claims to show what's accessing a file. The next time I have this problem I'll run it and see.