Can't Safely Disconnect My External Hard Drive From Ny New Windows 10 Laptop

The external's an old Seagate something. Works perfectly fine. And on my old, piece of shit, 8.1 laptop, trying to disconnect it would either result as it should, or I'd get one of those famous dialog boxes saying that the device was currently in use and could not safely be disconnected. Well now on my new laptop, an Asus, every time I right-click the icon to disconnect, the drive appears to disconnect and then immediately reconnects for some reason, giving me no time to unplug it. The last time I tried it, however, there did seem to be a delay between disconnection and reconnection, and I could hear the noise the drive makes when it's on die down, so I considered reaching for the cable to pull it out, but that would have been a bad move because it then immediately reconnected. In order to finally disconnect the damn thing, I had to completely shut the laptop down. Help?

 

Try Start>Settings>Devices

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4051300/windows-10-safely-remove-hardware

 

Didn't work. Just automatically reconnected again. I have no time to unplug it. When I was able to disconnect from my old laptop, it would never reconnect automatically. If I wanted to recoonect it, I'd have to physically pull it out and put it back in again. But this new laptop doesn't do that. It detects the thing is still physically connected, because I haven't had time to unplug it yet, and just automatically reconnects to it.

 

Seagate has a page of tools for their drives. In the lower section of the page there is a drive detect utility to show model and firmware and such. May offer a firmware update.

https://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/

 

Thanks for the suggestion but ya need a serial number for that, and the drive's now several years old. I lost the serial number some time back then.

 

What I saw said even without removing a drive. I figured it a complete utility.

Utilities and Plugins
Drive Detect

Identify your drive, model and serial numbers, and firmware revision without removing your drive.

 

Uh, but where do I get that? Ya haven't given me a link to it, or told me where to find it.

 

Download CrystalDiskInfo, install it, and run it. Not only will it show you the S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) stats for the drive, but it will also display the make, model, serial number, and firmware version. If you have more than one drive in/on the computer, you'll have to click on the drive in the toolbar below the menu to select the 2nd, 3rd, etc.

Have you tried going into "File Explorer > This PC", right-click on your external drive, and select "Eject"?

 

Great, thanks. I'll try that.

 

Just ran it, thanks (didn't need to install it; it's portable). It told me the serial number of my external drive, great, but it also told me something kind of worrying. It says that the health status of my main C drive is good and at 100%, but all it says about my external drive is good. No percentage score. Should I be worried about that? I also bought and installed Hard Disk Sentinel over the weekend, and it tells me that the health and performance of both drives are both at 100%, no actions are needed on either drive, and both should continue to last for years. But now this new app, CrystalDisk, can't give me a percentage score on the health of my external drive. So that has me worried.

 

Just saw your edit now. I'll try that.

 

And I just did. There is no Eject option.

 

Just entered the serial number on Seagate's website. It was able to tell me which of their external drives I had but couldn't find any firmware for that serial number.

 

Please post a screenshot of your drive in CrystalDiskInfo so we know what we're dealing with.

 

I really don't like what it says beside Reported Uncorrectable Errors there. Current 100, Worst 100, that doesn't fill me with a shitload of confidence.

 

I gave the Seagate link in post #4. It's highlighted in blue on my screen. About halfway down the screen.............under a BIG BOLD heading...'Utilities and plug-ins'.

Drive Detect