Problem ejecting USB mass storage device

[mtp04gm]

Hi All,

 

I have a USB 2.0 external mass storage device (120gb powered by USB) which I connect to my laptop every now and then. The problem is that most of the time when I try to remove the device it comes up with a warning message that 'problem ejecting USB mass storage device'.

I am certain that while this error message pops up I have no visible program accessing any files from this HDD.

On the other hand when I use a small 128 MB pen drive....it comes out nice and clean every single time. I have checked the system restore point settings in case thats what is trying to access the drive.

Any suggestions??

 

Thanks

[esme]

sounds like XP has misidentified the device as something with a drawer like a CDRom if it's trying an 'Eject' function, not sure how you'd cure that.

 

did you get a disk and enclosure seperately and put the disk in the enclosure yourself or did you get it as a complete unit ?

[torin8]

Have you tried closing your antivirus program down when you get this error - sometimes this cures mine when it happens.

[Greybeard]

Don't you have a little icon in the systray to click on when you want to dismount the drive ? I just click on this and get a dialog that says 'it is now safe to diconnect the drive'...or something along those lines.

 

Then again I'm running Win98

[mtp04gm]

thanks guys for all ur reply...i am running this on an XP machine and the external HDD is branded. I do get an icon in the system tray which has an option of stopping the device...and its only upon using that method it gives me an error message.

Stopping the antivirus is something which I haven't tried. I have a McAfee antivirus and have it set for 'On Access Scan'. maybe that's what is causing the problem. Will surely test that and let u all know.

thanks again

[esme]

McAfee can be a little intrusive

 

just as an experiment if you double click the system tray icon you should get pop up showing you what devices are connected, is the device correctly identified as a disk drive ? is there another device it thinks is connected as well ?

[mtp04gm]

McAfee can be a little intrusive

 

just as an experiment if you double click the system tray icon you should get pop up showing you what devices are connected, is the device correctly identified as a disk drive ? is there another device it thinks is connected as well ?

 

It does come up with correct devices. something like SAMSUNG HM120JC USB device with 2 further drop downs having the partition i have on my external HDD. Tried disabling the McAfee On-Access Scan option...but that doesn't seem to help either.

I once came across an option somewhere in settings about a delay write property of XP...as in, if you transfer files from one drive to another (specially on external HDD) it shows the process complete but in reality it waits for the system to be idle or free before it actually copies it (thats what i have understood so far). The thing is that i cant find that option anymore.

Also do know of any program which tells exactly and probably all the files being accessed and their respective drives (something like Task Manager but much more detailed)

maybe by using that i might find which processes are running from a particular drive and could kill them for drive removal.

 

thanks

[esme]

it could be taking a while to flush data to the disk I suppose, if thats the case then if you dismiss the error and tell it to disconnect again then it should disconnect ok second time round because it will have finished the flush from the first request