Can't safely remove usb hard drive

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

Most likely you still have a view of it open in windows explorer or my
computer. close it & try again.
"victord66" <victord66@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E238E9DA-C7AC-4B10-961B-FDDFABC48B2C@microsoft.com...
When I try to safely remove my Maxtor usb drive I get an error message: 'The
device 'Generic volume' cannot be stopped because a program is still
accessing it.' There are no programs accessing the drive as I only use it
for storage. How can I eliminate this problem? Thanks.

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

I had the same problem. Then I decided to shutdown the system and pull the
USB off while it was shutdown. During the reboot mine stops and says...
insert boot device... and until I plug it back in the system won't boot! Try
and boot without your Maxtor connected.

"John" wrote:

> Most likely you still have a view of it open in windows explorer or my
> computer. close it & try again.
> "victord66" <victord66@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:E238E9DA-C7AC-4B10-961B-FDDFABC48B2C@microsoft.com...
> When I try to safely remove my Maxtor usb drive I get an error message: 'The
> device 'Generic volume' cannot be stopped because a program is still
> accessing it.' There are no programs accessing the drive as I only use it
> for storage. How can I eliminate this problem? Thanks.
>
>
>

I couldnt remove my external USB Harddisk 3.5" drive even if i installed USB Safely remove programs and Unlocker because turns out my 750gb drive was from my old computer and had 3 partitions. One of them apparently had an OS (WINXP) and that was the reason all the ejecting kept giving me errors. I clean formatted what had been my drive C, and all my problems went away.

Same problem here. Digital Westren 1TB Essential USB Extern HD. I used the Windows XP integrated programes Scandisc. and checkdisk. Than I trayed Norton Disk Doctor, Unloock, Process Explorer, Ccleaner and Regcleaner all thise without succiding. I copied all data to a new drive and formated to tray to solve the problem. But NO!!! again.
As I have several extern HD, I notice the fault like a kind of contamination to other discs, so in panic I started running all kind of antivirus, tojan killers and spyware, but the problem presisted. No virus or spys where found. Than in in all frustration a light started burning. DRIVERS ! ! !
Have your USB Extern HD connected. In the norification area, right side og the Taskbar, dobble L click the icon Safetly Remove Hardware | Mass Storage device, Properties | Drivers tab | chice Uninstall. Than reboot stil with your USB Extern HD connected. Now you will see the system will notifie you that a new drive is found and bla..bla..bla... the problem is solved.
Excuse my english, but I hope you understand.
Good luck.

The Best way to do this is to double click (left click) the safely remove arrow then double click your drive then tell the computer to completely stop the drive. This will work 9 out of 10 times. If it for some reason does not work then what should be done is restart the computer and try this again. If all else fails and you don't believe that it is safe to remove your drive shut down computer and make sure the power switch on the back of your tower for the power supply is off, battery out (laptop). this will completely cut power to your drive safely and then the drive can be unplugged!

That means a handle process is still accessing the harddrive, probably due to cache information that was not yet written to the disk. Try terminating the explorer process in the task manager, or using a free tool called ProcessExplorer that allows you to, for instance search a handle operating in a certain harddrive (search d:, for instance and it will show all handles operating accesses to that drive), click to go to its process, and terminate it, It always works for me when cannot remove harddrive safely, at least in WinXP, have never tried in Vista, and also works in Win7.
As well as ProcessExplorer, any other program that does the same should do so.

Hi

Your USB might be infected with virus , check it with a good antivirus software ( I suggest Avira anti virus ) and try again.

My USB drive always has the error "cannot be stopped right now because a program is still accessing.." Have tried stoping and restarting explorer via task manager. This did not help. No "clue" as to what program is still trying to access my usb drive.
Always have this issue every time I try to "safely remove" the USB drive.
I finally have given up and simply pull it out without trying to "safely remove" it.

Open "Control Panel", click on "Device Manager", expand "Disk drives", right click your USB device, click on Properties. Click the Policies tab. Make sure "Quick removal" button is selected, click OK. You can now remove the USB drive without worrying about using the "Safely Remove Hardware" process.

Closing explorer in the task manager, and then opening a new copy did the trick: When you close explorer this way the start menu and task bar is of course gone. So while still in task manager go to [applications],[new task] and then type "explorer" without any path info. After this I was able to do the safe removal step like usual.

This worked on Win XP, never had this problem on Win 7.

Hi,
It worked for me
 
Double click green arrow at tray
Choose your hardware device
Click on properties
In 'general', tab in 'device usage'
select 'Do not use this device.'
Click ok
Choose restart option

It should work now
You have to repeat this process once for each pendrive you use.

Click "Ctrl+Alt+Delete" to check whether all your programs are closed.

After reading all the solutions above, it was clear to me that there was no definite solution that worked for all situations.
I had deleted a lot of files from my Western Digital USB HDD and I was having this same problem. I closed Explorer (and all other applications too) and I checked Task Manager, so I knew no Applications were accessing the HDD. And I read the solutions above. And I checked my drivers, but they were all up to date. and I checked my Policies via Control Panel >> Device Manager and found that 'Optimize for Fast Removal' was already checked. So none of those solutions were relevant.
But I noticed that the box for Allow Indexing Service was ticked.
Now, I had just finished deleting many files from the USB hard drive so I wondered if maybe the Indexing Service, which runs in the background, was re-indexing the HDD and still trying to 'catch up'. I wondered how long that might take?
So I left everything running, and went off and a had a shower (prior to going to bed). When I got back to my computer 15 minutes later I tried Safely Removing the USB HDD again, and it closed down perfectly that time.
So I had not changed anything. I had just waited 15 minutes.
I assume that the Indexing Service was still accessing the HDD. If it was the Indexing Service, the time you have to wait will increase as the amount of data (and number of files) on the HDD increases.

Hello and welcome to Tom's Hardware Forums.

That's a good suggestion and will remain open to readers even though it's time to close this old thread now to keep the Forum tidy.