Help! Major Problem With Expansion Drive

I've just spent 11 hours backing up the contents of a failing external hard drive to a brand new Seagate expansion drive. All contents backed up successfully but now I can't disconnect the expansion drive. Every time I right-click on Safely Remove Hardware and select Eject, I'm told "This device is currently in use." HELP! How can I successfully disconnect the drive without damaging it? It doesn't plug in and there's no on/off switch on it. You just connect it to the computer through a USB port and it automatically comes on. I don't want to risk just pulling the connection from the computer in case that damages it. What should I do?

 

Uncheck file indexing.

 

Hi. Just tried that. But got a dialog box that says do I want to apply the disable indexing attribute change to drive F only or to all subfolders and files as well. Which should I do?

 

apply it to all.

 

Thanks.

 

That didn't help, unfortunately. I'm still getting the "This device is currently in use" message. I was just watching a video on the drive a few minutes ago, closed the video, closed the window displaying the drive's contents, and right-clicked Safely Remove Hardware. Again, "This device is currently in use." What can I do about this? I don't know what app is using it, or how to figure that out, and I don't want to keep having to shut down the computer just to disconnect the drive.

 

Know what I should do?

 

Go to Control Panel. Under drives select the problem drive and then properties. Select Quick Removal under Policies

 

Sorry, I can't find drives in the control panel. I'm on Windows 8.1 This is what I see when I open Control Panel.

 

OK. I've figured it out now. Device Manager, Disk drives. This is what I see under Policies.



So quick removal is already selected. Should I select Better performance and then uncheck Enable write caching on the device?

 

Put it on better performance and then see if 'safely remove' works. Since that's the way it is shown

 

What about unchecking Enable write caching on the device? Or should I just leave it as it is?

 

With Enable write caching on you should use 'safefly remove'. Does it work?

 

Just tried selecting Better performance, but when I clicked OK, I got a dialog box saying my hardware settings have changed and asking do I want to restart the computer? What should I do? The expansion drive is still on and connected.

 

Let it restart with the drive still plugged in. After the restart, see if 'safely remove' will then work.

 

Will do.

 

Nope. As soon as the computer had restarted, I opened up a video on the expansion drive again, closed it after a minute, closed the window with the drive's contents, right-clicked Safely Remove, there was a delay, then a dialog box saying Windows can't stop the device because a program is still using it.

 

Is your video player actually closed or is it in the system tray? Does you video player always open in the last used directory?

 

It's actually closed. What do you mean always open in the last used directory? I don't usually open the player on its own. I just double-click on a video.

 

Okay. Here's a link that shows 2 ways of checking what may be using the drive. Try the programs listed in this short thread. Processor Explorer and Unlocker.

https://forums.techguy.org/threads/...ith-any-usb-connections-in-windows-7.1029584/

 

OK, I ran Process Explorer and when I typed in F for the expansion drive and clicked search, there were 8,210 matching items. I have no idea what to look for.

EDIT: Have to try again. Forgot to type F:

EDIT: Well that narrowed it down. 6 matching items.

 

I only have these 2 showing and I'm able to 'safely remove'.






Since You have restarted earlier with no problem, try restarting again. But this time don';t do anything that involves the F:drive. Except do run the process explorer the same and see if anything changes. Then before doing anything else -try 'safely remove'

 

Ah, when you say don't do anything that involves the F: drive, I'm guessing you mean don't play any videos or anything. OK, I'll try it.

 

OK. I restarted, again with the F: drive still plugged in. When the computer restarted, I didn't play any videos or open the F: drive at all. I just ran Process Explorer, got the same 6 matching items, and again am not able to safely remove.

 

I've been trying to duplicate your 6 listings from Process Explorer. I only ever get 2 explorer's using the drive. I've turned on caching, turned on the recycle bin, turned on restore, nothing gives me what you have. Only difference I see is in post#8 my properties and your post#10 your properties, they're from the same place but different. Is your 8.1 original or an upgrade?

From the thread @ techguy , Have you tried the 'unlocker'. I would run it - without deleting or stopping anything, just to see what it throws out as a possibility.

 

It's original. What the computer came preinstalled with.

I'll try Unlocker now.

EDIT: Here's the result,

 

Here's the result in case you don't see that edit,

 

I would probably look at the choices under the drop-down list for 'action'.

I found this thread by searching for your 6 items in P.E.

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=1270169

Their problem was a search utility, which I used even while working on this topic. Maybe need more searching to find what all can be using the '$Extend\$RmMetadat\.....

 

The drop-down choices were Delete, Rename and Move. I'll have a look at that thread now. I do always have the Everything search utility open. Could that be what's causing this?

EDIT: Seems not. I shut down Everything but still couldn't safely remove.

 

Funny. Wasn't expecting the search utility mentioned in that thread to turn out to be Everything. If shutting down Everything worked for that poster, how come it's not working for me?

 

Turns out I hadn't properly shut down Everything. I'd just right-clicked on it in the system tray and selected Exit. Had to end the Everything task in Task Manager to fully turn it off. But even that still didn't work for me. I still cannot safely remove.

 

It might would take a re-boot after trying. But-

From what I've seen and read on this, removable drives have the write caching disabled by default. And as long as you have gotten done writing or copying anything to the disk it should be alright to just dis-connect without using 'safely remove'. Or remove them the next time you do shutdown.
I have 2 externals and a thumbdrive a lot of times plugged in and I can't be sure if I always 'safely remove'.

It may be that an anti-virus or backup utility is monitoring the drive also. That was just one example <Everything>. Could be other programs use similar $metaNAMES$, I wouldn't know without searching.

But I also have an original 8.1 here and our's aren't acting the same.

 

I'll try a reboot now.

I don't feel comfortable just disconnecting without safely removing first. The way this expansion drive works is there's no way to turn it off. It doesn't plug into the mains and there's no on/off switch. Connecting it to the computer automatically turns it on and there's no way to turn it off without disconnecting. I feel if I were to just yank it out without safely removing, that could damage it.

I don't think I have any backup utilities running but I do have Avast Antivirus on. Maybe that's the cause.

 

Another maybe thing to look at - when you run the processor explorer and get the list from 'find handles' look at the pid number. pid 4 is always system if I recall but before you had 2 that were 856 or such. Run P.E. and see the number then click on the PID column to sort it numerically and see what corresponds to that PID number. May be a clue.

 

Forgot to mention, with Better performance selected, you HAVE to safely remove. It's only with Quick removal selected that you're allowed to just yank the drive out.

Not sure what you mean here by what corresponds but I've discovered it was Everything that was causing me not to be able to safely remove with Better performance selected. When I rebooted, and chose not to turn Everything on, I could safely remove without a hitch. As an experiment, I then switched the drive's policy back to Quick removal and turned Everything back on, and could STILL safely remove. I think what might have been happening before was I was right-clicking Safely Remove IMMEDIATELY after closing the window of the drive's contents. I think maybe I wasn't giving that explorer window time to shut down properly. I just assumed if I couldn't see it, it was closed and I could safely remove, but it seems I have to pause for a second first.

Thanks for all your help in pinning down the problem!

 

Glad you got it sorted. After 11 hours of backing up a drive I can see why you didn't want to lose anything. Plus a couple more hours finding this! Enjoy your new drive - and the videos! See ya

 

It's happening again. Even without Everything now. I just copied a bunch of files to the drive, then tried Safely Remove and got "This device is currently in use" again. Here's what Process Explorer says,

 

Hello?

 

Are you absolutely sure the 'Everything' app is not running?

 

Yep. This happened again last night. Again, Everything wasn't running.

 

During your previous bout with this problem I saw in the threads I looked at that some had trouble with the video player being the problem. maybe you should be sure that any app you used that accessed the drive is actually shut down.

What is the expansion drive model your using?

 

Good idea. I'll try that next time it happens.

Not sure how to find that out.

 

Did you install the Everything service?

 

What do you mean service? You mean the app?

 

When you installed Everything, you were given the option to have it run as a Windows service. If so, make sure it is set to 'Disabled'.

 

That worked, thanks! I unchecked the Everything Service box under Tools, Options, General, restarted the computer, tested the expansion drive twice and now I'm having no problems safely removing it. Even with Everything enabled and even after playing videos on it. Thanks again!

 

Oh christ, here we go again!



Every time I think this problem is finally solved, it happens all over again.

 

Hello?

 

Did you or did you not go into services.msc (via the Run box) find 'Everything' and change its status to DISABLED and hit 'apply'?
You also have to click on 'stop' if it shows as 'started'.
That's what Just Playin suggested and that's the correct way to do it.

 

Any help? I know it's not Everything now, so what else could be causing this?