Unplugging External Hard Drive.

[10ClarionSt]

I want to unplug my EH but when I check to see that it's safe to unplug (click on small icon at bottom right of screen) it says the device is still in use, when I know that it isn't. Does anyone know what's happening? I just want to unplug it but don't want to risk losing all my data without verification that it's safe to do so. A friend of mine just unplugged his and lost all of his data because he didn't verify that it was safe to unplug. Can anyone help with this please? Thank you.

[davegosling]

Shut your machine down i.e. power it off, don't just reboot / restart it.

Then unplug the device and switch the machine on again. If the device is being referenced by any operating system processes, you will receive notifications of that.

Otherwise, you should be fine.

[davegosling]

Size is irrelevant. If there is a reason, it's almost certainly because the external device is being used as the the default file location for something.

Like I said, you'll know soon enough when you switch your machine back on.

[Buenchico]

It's a fairly common problem. Windows thinks that a program (typically Windows Explorer) is still trying to access the drive, even though it isn't.

As has been suggested, simply unplugging the drive with your computer turned off is all that's required. However there's another way of dealing with the problem:

Install this little utility on your computer. (It's on mine):
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Miscellaneous/Unlocker.shtml
When a drive is incorrectly shown as being in use, go to Windows Explorer, right-click on its icon and select 'Unlock All'. You'll then find that you can eject the drive in the usual way.