flash drive wont eject

[ryuji16]

greetings all... this is my first post

im having this irritating problem with my flash drive and pc. my flash drive is a kingston 512, but this also happens to my 256's. the drive will not "safely" eject, because it says a program is still using it. there are no programs running, and i went through the task manager to make sure of it. the flash drive itself is not in any activity, the led light was at a slow, steady pulse. i tried right click-eject and left click eject. i also tried ejecting from my computer. same thing always comes up.

i use these flash drives back and forth from school to home. at school, everything is macintosh, os 9 and 10. at home i have xp. could this be contributing to the problem?

lastly, this problem ONLY happens if i copy something from the flash drive to the hard drive. copying vice-versa does not produce this effect.

so... what do you guys think?

 

[micker377]

With XP, do you use the "Safely Remove Hardware" function?

 

[ryuji16]

yes, and ive tried doing so from different angles with no success. i always get the same crap, that some program is still using it =/

 

[bcastner]

The devices are designed to be hot swappable.
If you are certain there is nothing using the drive, just pull it out.

Windows provides a more extensive set of features for these devices under XP SP2, but in general it cannot distinguish between a removable device, and a device with removable media.

 

[ryuji16]

thank you bcastner, i was worried that i might have been damaging the drive when i just pull it out like that. but i suppose it makes sense since the computer doesnt appear to be writing/reading from it. is this damaging in anyway? because usually when it successfully ejects, the light turns off completely, but when i pull it out early its still on...

thanks for your guys' help thus far

 

[bcastner]

Not all USB devices are safely removed without damage. But the USB pen drive specification requires exactly that capability.