Cannot safely remove USB External Hardrive - Windows 7

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Hey guys,
so i have been having this issue ever since i ever started using Win 7. At times the usb device will remove with ease but at other times it is just near impossible (Only way to safely end all processes is to shut down). Now i have done some googling and many people jump to the conclusion that it is a process that will not release the hard drive. They recommend a software called Unlocker. That tends to help at times but maybe has a 30% success rate. I just can't afford to yank this hard drive out anymore as i'm scared i might get more weak sectors! Well i did some further research and tracked down that PID 4 is the culprit for using the device. The handle location or file is shown to be G:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog via Process Explorer

Now many users on the net have seeemed to have had this ongoing issue and Microsoft still never got back to them with a viable fix : Here is one guys post and it is pretty much the same issue i am experiencing.
http://www.technologyquestions.com/...es-safely-remove-external-usb-hard-drive.html


I am going to test out a few apps and see if any help but from your side have any of you guys had this issue? What worked for you guys
 
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Hey +-

What has helped me in the past in Windows 7 with external drives that could not be safely removed was to disable write-caching on the external drive.

In Device manager, expand the "Disk drives", right click on the external drive click "properties", click the "Policies" tab and tick "Quick removal" under the Removal policy options.

This has helped me in the past.
 
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Orrr, you can stop being paranoid and just take it out. Close all your active programs, be careful to save and there is nothing to worry about.

I haven't used safely remove USB for 6 years. Never once have I had an issue.


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agentrfr said:
Orrr, you can stop being paranoid and just take it out. Close all your active programs, be careful to save and there is nothing to worry about.

I haven't used safely remove USB for 6 years. Never once have I had an issue.


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Click to expand...

bad advice

The reason why you need to "safely remove" is that the host OS needs to flush any pending disk writes and failure to wait can result in loss of data
 
agentrfr said:
Orrr, you can stop being paranoid and just take it out. Close all your active programs, be careful to save and there is nothing to worry about.

I haven't used safely remove USB for 6 years. Never once have I had an issue.


Sent from the MyBroadband iPhone App
Click to expand...
Not advice I would like to see on a "tech" forum. There is too many variables that need to line up for this to be safe. Like time that have to pass for apps to release the drive and the last file copied that might be lost.
 
Eish - I know that problem - I've given up trying to find a definitive solution - I use "USB Safely Remove" - if it identifies that "....rmMetadata..." thingy then I just pull the plug
 
AfricanTech said:
Eish - I know that problem - I've given up trying to find a definitive solution - I use "USB Safely Remove" - if it identifies that "....rmMetadata..." thingy then I just pull the plug
Click to expand...

Yeah at least you KNOW my pain!!! It's a definite windows 7 bug they should attend to. Hopefully a future service pack will sort that Metadata sheet out :eek:
And USB Safely Remove is working like a charm so far.cheers
 
Funny story about this. My colleague had the same issue at work where he couldn't safely remove his removable hard drive. We tried Unlocker, using Process Explorer and so on, but nothing worked. Since the process was spawned by Explorer, we couldn't kill the process at the time for various reasons. Funny enough, he went to Computer, right clicked the drive and said Eject, and the drive dismounted.

As for just yanking the drive, I've seen that corrupt NTFS pretty badly to the point where the drive is unreadable in Windows and takes a full chkdsk /f to repair, if you are lucky.

All in all, a very annoying problem, one I hope gets fixed in the next service pack or in Windows 8.
 
bekdik said:
What Asha said - rclick on the drive & eject.
Click to expand...

Tried that and all other recommended tips. nothing worked. It just keeps saying the drive cannot be safely ejected. But it's definetely a known bug for many externals and removable devices.
Usb Safely Remove is at least working so i'm good :)
 
agentrfr said:
Orrr, you can stop being paranoid and just take it out. Close all your active programs, be careful to save and there is nothing to worry about.

I haven't used safely remove USB for 6 years. Never once have I had an issue.


Sent from the MyBroadband iPhone App
Click to expand...

Linux sometimes has issues when you a plug in a usb device that was'nt ejected properly in wondows. You quickly learn to get into the habit of ejecting the right way ;)
 
Happy Camper said:
Linux sometimes has issues when you a plug in a usb device that was'nt ejected properly in wondows. You quickly learn to get into the habit of ejecting the right way ;)
Click to expand...
What I wanted to say. It is very easy and tempting to just unplug but safe remove is there for a reason...
 
It sounds strange, but ensure all of your chipset drivers are up to date. I had issues where drives (both SATA drives and USB flash drives) often wouldn't want to 'safely remove' and after updating the BIOS and drivers have had no such issues.

NTFS is a robust file system. If you close any open files on the device, and close any applications that were making use of the device, I wouldn't imagine that you'd have an issue removing it if it won't 'safely remove'.
 
Yup... also disable search indexing on the external drives...

bekdik said:
Try disabling your AV software and then doing an eject. Also check that you are not sharing the drive.
Click to expand...

EDIT: Also there is a little app called Sync from the SysInternals guy that might also help, it flushes cached data to disk and can force a dismount of external drives...

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-za/sysinternals/bb897438.aspx

Another thing worth a try I guess.
 
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hey guys,
I did quite a bit of googling and many people seem to have it with specific external hd's. No program is using the drive except for the following process.

Safely Remove Usb explains which files are still in use by the drive :
Sytem process with PID 4.
g:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$Txflog.bf
g:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxflogContainer00000000000000001
g:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxflogContainer00000000000000002

It only happens on my laptop (Win 7). I have never had this issue with my desktop which is running XP. so it is probably a known issue that possibly SP1 could fix.
i will update all my drivers and see if that helps but for now USB Safely Remove is working 80 % of the time. Just one of those issues i guess that has NO definete solution :rolleyes:
 
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