Can't see what processes have a external USB drive locked. No Eject 1

[Zigger]

Hi all,

I have an external USB2.0 60GB drive and sometimes when I choose to safely remove the hardware from XP Service Pack2 I get the message

"The device 'Generic volume' cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later".

I have tried making sure nothing is open on the drive. Explorer is not accessing the drive. Indexing is turned off. Antivirus on demand scanning is off and sometimes I even have to switch off the PC to safely remove it. I even tried using Filemon from Sysinternals to see if anything was accessing the drive. Does anyone know of any applications which can identify what process maybe holding on to the drive as it were?

Please no answers saying just remove the drive physically as I have experienced data loss on drives that have not been safely removed from Windows XP in the past!!!

Regards

Zigger

 

[micker377]

I'm testing a USB/Firewire enclosure at this time. Twice, I've had data corrupted (shutting down properly?). So far, it's been OK for two weeks. I only shut down the external drive when the computer is off or in standby. It seems that most of the time when you try to "safely remove hardware", it says it is busy. Apparently, things are going on in the background.

 

[stduc]

I have a similar problem. Its a pain! I have found that sometimes closing all explorer windows will free the drive so you can eject it. Sometime closing all apps will do the trick. What always works for me is simply logging off and logging on. Then I can eject/safely remove hardware.