[sycho1981]

Hi all,
Anyone know the best way to remove my external hdd when that message appears without losing all my data??

Locate the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray, click on it and choose the device you want to remove then click stop, wait for the message that says It is now safe to remove and that's it.

[sycho1981]

Thats my problem though, it's after I've been through those steps that the message appears

[Dalo Harkin]

have you named the drive anything yet?
It is always best to name drives rather than leave them as 'Local disk' like windows does with the C:/ drive.
Other than that you must have something that is transferring data over to the PC from the external - whether that be a program or a file - something on your PC is accessing the external.

[Tootech]

If you have any Explorer windows open, Windows will give you that message.

Also, any programs you have running that are accessing the volume, even just monitoring it may prevent it being stopped.

[sycho1981]

makes sense but as far as i can tell. nothings open or using that drive so how do I find out where the problem is?

[BeeCeeBee]

I get the exact same message almost every time I try to remove my external hard drive using the safely remove hardware function. For some reason it also identifies the single drive as both generic and by its name.

Saying that, unless the disc is obviously being accessed by a running program, if I wait a few seconds and try again and it always come up as safe to remove. Frankly, I think it just errs in favour of caution or more likely that disc was being monitored and the first attempt acts to shut down that process. Whatever the actual reason it has never caused any problem and the need to stop it twice has never taken longer then 10 seconds

[Dalo Harkin]

Its not an easy one to say what it could be on this occasion - what do you have on the drive? if its just photos and used for storage and no programs then nothing will be running on the drive so feel free to use the safely remove hardware (I never use it if I am honest) and just whip whatever drive out, but if you have any programs running from the drive then thats what will be making it be accessed.

Is it an absolute necessity that you remove the drive at that point, why don't you wait until you have shut the machine down and then remove it.

This way you can be sure that no data exchange is still occurring.

[sycho1981]

Well it's been 3-4 days now and the hdd is still not ejecting, ive looked at the properties and configured it for quick ejecting and still it's not stopping. I've tried turning the computer off on other occassions and when i reboot i find that all my data has vanished. The drive is only used to store videos,music and pics, it has no programs either on it or running into it so i'm stumped

[BeeCeeBee]

Are you saying that if you leave the drive attached and reboot the computer the data on your portable drive is gone?

[Goku]

Hello Sycho. Please read the following article and perform the troubleshooting steps suggested. See if they help or not.

"Generic volume cannot be stopped right now" error when Removing a pen-drive

Let us know how it goes though. Good Luck.

-- Goku

[sycho1981]

yeah beeceebee thats whats happened in the past. i had already downloaded unlocker Goku and in the past its worked perfectly but for some reason it was giving me the option of using it this time but i've just re-installed it and everything is all good now. I would reccomend the program though as ive been using it since my last crash with no problems

[Goku]

Glad you got it resolved Sycho. Feel free to ask any more doubts or queries you may have.

-- Goku

[AdvancedSetup]

Just a small note that the link on that page is for the older version.

The current version is 1.8.7
Unlocker Home Page

Direct download for unlocker1.8.7.exe

[RandyL]

Thanks for the update Ron.