external hard drive

[juneanne]

Hi, when using my external hard drive and i want to " safely remove hardware " i get a message saying " cannot safely remove drive---- because it is being used by something else, i do not have anything else running at the time so i don`t know what this means, would it be ok to shut my computer off then remove the hard drive ? Thanks

[mgmcc]

I regularly have this problem and it seems to be because the "focus" of Windows Explorer is still on the drive. What I do is to open Windows Explorer, navigate to My Documents and open something in there, just so that Windows Explorer has moved from looking at the external drive to accessing a folder in "C" drive. This then usually lets "Safely Remove Hardware" release the USB drive.

If that hasn't worked, carry on using the PC for several minutes without accessing the external drive and you should be able to "Safely Remove Hardware". You can, of course, shut down the PC and then unplug it.

[juneanne]

Thanks for your reply Mike i will give that a go. June