External hard drive question

[king0fhearts]

I just purchased an external hard drive. This is my first external hard drive so i dont know how to deal with them. Do i need "safely remove hardware" when i would shut down my laptop? or can i safely shut it down without removing the Hard drive (i connect it with USB 2.0)

P.S. Also there are times when i would try to safely remove the hard drive and a message saying "The Device 'Generic volume' cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later." However the external hard drive isnt in use. im not copying or dowloading anything to it. I would wait 3 mins and the message would still pop up.

Thnx for the help! (sry for any grammar errors)

 

[willsko87]

I'm pretty sure that 'Safely Remove Hardware' isn't that critical. I may be wrong. It just tell you when your hard drive has stop being written to. Shutting down the computer would automatically stop writing to the external hard drive, so I dont think you have an problems there.

In regards to The "Device 'Generic volume' cannot be stopped right now," other applications may be using the drive.
I also found this:
http://david.fallingrock.net/2004/09/21/cannot-stop-device-right-now/
and
https://iomega-eu-en.custhelp.com/c...search_text=&p_faqid=738&p_created=1072727146

Hopefully they help. Good luck.

 

[king0fhearts]

Hey, thnx for the help willsko87. Both the Norton and Recycle Bin method did not help me. However, while reading through the different posts, someone posted the solution for MY problem.

Here are the steps for those of you who wants to know:

1. Go to My Computer then right click on the external hard drive and click on properties.

2. Click on Hardware Tab, select the external hard drive and click on properties

3. Go to policies Tab and you'll see two choices

3a. Optimize for quick removal : This basically states that you CAN unplug your external hard drive without using the Safe Removal option. (for ppl on the rush)

3b. Optimize for perfomance: This is what you need to chose if you want to use the "Safely remove harware" option. It is also the recommended one.

Hope this helps for anyone having the same problem as me =)