Help please with external

Dogdots

I was downloading onto my Seagate external and also doing some moving around of things on it. Now I can't safely disconnect it. It keeps telling me its busy and I need to close a program that is still running. I have no program still running.

Any ideas on what I need to do. If this is in the wrong place...please move it to where I may get some help. All my photos are on it :cry

Thanks.

mike.strock

Dogdots wrote:

I was downloading onto my Seagate external and also doing some moving around of things on it. Now I can't safely disconnect it. It keeps telling me its busy and I need to close a program that is still running. I have no program still running.

Any ideas on what I need to do. If this is in the wrong place...please move it to where I may get some help. All my photos are on it :cry

Thanks.

Windows? Macintosh? If Windows, I believe if you do a full shutdown of your machine that once the machine is shutdown you should be good to remove the drive from the USB port.

Macintosh? Sorry, not my area...

Mike.

Dogdots

mike.strock wrote:

Windows? Macintosh? If Windows, I believe if you do a full shutdown of your machine that once the machine is shutdown you should be good to remove the drive from the USB port.

Macintosh? Sorry, not my area...

Mike.

It's windows..sorry for not saying that. So..I can just shut down my computer and then unplug the external?

Tom

I've seen this happen when antivirus software is accessing/monitoring the drive. I agree that the drive can be safely removed when you next reboot the computer.

Dogdots

Tom wrote:

I've seen this happen when antivirus software is accessing/monitoring the drive. I agree that the drive can be safely removed when you next reboot the computer.

Ok..I want to get this right. I shut down my computer then unplug the machine?

Because I did shut down my computer and then tried to safely shut the external down and the same box popped up saying it was busy.

mike.strock

Dogdots wrote:

Ok..I want to get this right. I shut down my computer then unplug the machine?

Because I did shut down my computer and then tried to safely shut the external down and the same box popped up saying it was busy.

If the machine is shut off, where is this box popping up? (confused look on my face).

You should be able to completely shut the Windows machine down, and once it is powered down, you should be able to safely remove the USB drive, in my experience.

Mike.

Dogdots

mike.strock wrote:

If the machine is shut off, where is this box popping up? (confused look on my face).

You should be able to completely shut the Windows machine down, and once it is powered down, you should be able to safely remove the USB drive, in my experience.

Mike.

Mike,

The window pops up every time I try to safely shut it down---only then. When I did shut down my machine and restart it...I tried again to safely remove the external. That is when the box popped up again. I never unplugged the external after a shut down.

I will shut down my machine and just unplug my external. I thank you for your help Mike

Richard

Mary,

I get this message too from time to time on my Western Digital USB drive. Don't know about Vista, but here's what I can tell you about XP Pro:

You can always remove an external drive after the system has shut down.

You are less likely to find the drive unexpectedly in use if you right-click on the drive in Explorer, choose properties, and in the General tab, make sure that indexing is unchecked.

From the Hardware tab in that same window--and with the external drive connected--highlight the external drive and click on the properties button. Then click on the Policies tab and select Optimize for Quick Removal and save.

If you have followed these steps, you should be able to remove the drive any time--except, of course, when you know you are using it for something.

HTH.

Pupator

I think reveals a flaw in your setup though - because you seem terrified that the drive might not work (it will be fine in this case, as I'm sure you know by now).

Is there a backup copy of that drive or the pictures on it?

i_worship_the_King

If you did a lot of work on the drive windows may either be doing a delayed-write to the drive, or as mentioned above, reindexing the drive. If there are tons of files (IE, a photo backup) the index may take FOREVER and a day to regenerate.

Luckily 99% of the time Windows can recover from just yanking a drive out, even with delayed write trying to do something - usually the files being written are the indexing file and/or other useless files that it can just repair or recreate the next time you plug in your drive.

Also, you may want to look into some flavor of NAS setup with a RAID1 (mirroring) inside. It'll cost ~$500, but they're practically bulletproof. I'm upgrading (when this customers check clears) to one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822122022

With 2 10K RPM drives in RAID0 in the box and those on the gigabit network this system should still be super fast with data, and have complete redundancy. Plus the Netgear boxes have extra USB ports where my current backup drive can plug in and get a double backup (which I try to do around once a week.)

mike.strock

i_worship_the_King wrote:

If you did a lot of work on the drive windows may either be doing a delayed-write to the drive, or as mentioned above, reindexing the drive. If there are tons of files (IE, a photo backup) the index may take FOREVER and a day to regenerate.

Luckily 99% of the time Windows can recover from just yanking a drive out, even with delayed write trying to do something - usually the files being written are the indexing file and/or other useless files that it can just repair or recreate the next time you plug in your drive.

You are braver than I am. I would never just 'yank a drive out', I've lost files that way. I always shut down my machine first, if possible.

Mike.

Dogdots

Richard wrote:

Mary,

You are less likely to find the drive unexpectedly in use if you right-click on the drive in Explorer, choose properties, and in the General tab, make sure that indexing is unchecked. HTH.

I got to this point and it asks me if I want to make the changes to just drive K or if I want to apply this to drive K and its subfolders and files

Any suggestions on which is best?

SloYerRoll

Dogdots wrote:

I got to this point and it asks me if I want to make the changes to just drive K or if I want to apply this to drive K and its subfolders and files

Any suggestions on which is best?

Hi Mary,
Apply to K and subfolders is fine.

-Jon

Dogdots

SloYerRoll wrote:

Hi Mary,
Apply to K and subfolders is fine.

-Jon

Can you explain indexing? I'm assuming its filing my data that I downloaded. But I'm wrong more then I'm right with this stuff

Thanks

SloYerRoll

Dogdots wrote:

Can you explain indexing? I'm assuming its filing my data that I downloaded. But I'm wrong more then I'm right with this stuff

Thanks

Well your right this time
All indexing does is make catalogs the contents of your drive (K in this example) so your computer provide search results faster.

It does make things faster. But it also slows things down when it catalogs items. So it's usually the preferred method of not indexing unless you have a specific reason to.

Dogdots

SloYerRoll wrote:

Well your right this time
All indexing does is make catalogs the contents of your drive (K in this example) so your computer provide search results faster.

It does make things faster. But it also slows things down when it catalogs items. So it's usually the preferred method of not indexing unless you have a specific reason to.

I got it right

Ok...now I'm onto hooking up the bugger and see if it works right.