Unplugging / Safely Removing USB devices

LazyLion

LazyLion

King of de Jungle
Joined
Mar 17, 2005
Messages
107,422
Reaction score
9,942
Location
District 9
ok, so you know how sometimes those little icons in your system tray don't show up (in Windows XP)? happens to me a lot. I plug a USB device (Flashdisk or removable drive) into my PC or laptop... and it recognises it. But when I go to remove it... the little icon has disappeared that allows me to safely remove it. Now usually I would not bother, but Linux does not like you doing this, it wants you to go back and safely remove the USB device.

How do I safely remove a USB device when there is no icon in the system tray for me to click on?
 
Find out what its device name is, e.g. /dev/sdb0

Code: 
sudo umount /dev/sdb0
 
Garyvdh said:
ok, so you know how sometimes those little icons in your system tray don't show up (in Windows XP)? happens to me a lot. I plug a USB device (Flashdisk or removable drive) into my PC or laptop... and it recognises it. But when I go to remove it... the little icon has disappeared that allows me to safely remove it. Now usually I would not bother, but Linux does not like you doing this, it wants you to go back and safely remove the USB device.

How do I safely remove a USB device when there is no icon in the system tray for me to click on?
Click to expand...

Don't know about linux, but in XP, u can go to My Computer (explorer) and right click the device.
Usually an "eject" in the menu.
 
Never cared about that much I just pluged it in and pulled it out again, never had any problems :)
 
sn3rd said:
Find out what its device name is, e.g. /dev/sdb0

Code: 
sudo umount /dev/sdb0
Click to expand...

lol... I am talking about in XP ... not in Linux :p

or were you just bein funny :D

I tried right-clicking on the device itself as well as in Device Manager... and there is an eject option. But when you click on eject it gives you an error message "Ejecting this device may cause you to lose Data..." and then something about stopping the device by clicking in its icon in the system tray.

Everywhere else I look, there is no "safe removal" option. :(

It would not be an issue, except that I then want to plug the device into a linux system, and when I do it tells me that this device was not removed properly from the Windows system and accessing might cause data loss.
 
Garyvdh said:
lol... I am talking about in XP ... not in Linux :p

or were you just bein funny :D

I tried right-clicking on the device itself as well as in Device Manager... and there is an eject option. But when you click on eject it gives you an error message "Ejecting this device may cause you to lose Data..." and then something about stopping the device by clicking in its icon in the system tray.

Everywhere else I look, there is no "safe removal" option. :(

It would not be an issue, except that I then want to plug the device into a linux system, and when I do it tells me that this device was not removed properly from the Windows system and accessing might cause data loss.
Click to expand...

U mentioned "but Linux does not like you doing this" for some reason.:)
 
alf101 said:
U mentioned "but Linux does not like you doing this" for some reason.:)
Click to expand...

I meant... Linux does not like it when you just pull a device out of a Windows System and plug it straight back into a Linux System. It gives you an error message. :p
 
alf101 said:
f sakes, I still don't understand u linux people:confused::confused::confused:
Click to expand...

Well, this is not really a Linux Question... that's just a side issue.

The main question is... How do I safely remove / stop a USB device in Windows if there is no icon in the System Tray to click on?
 
Start -> Run -> enter the following: %SystemRoot%\System32\RUNDLL32.EXE shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

Will bring up the Safely Remove Hardware box...

My icon also disappears all the time - am using an application called USB Safely Remove, and it works very well...

I found that when I ran AutoPatcher (the latest version) it cleard this problem (and a few others), so not sure why it does it - go figure, go Microsoft! :D
 
Last edited:
howardb said:
Start -> Run -> enter the following: %SystemRoot%\System32\RUNDLL32.EXE shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

Will bring up the Safely Remove Hardware box...

My icon also disappears all the time - am using an application called USB Safely Remove, and it works very well...

I found that when I ran AutoPatcher (the latest version) it cleard this problem (and a few others), so not sure why it does it - go figure, go Microsoft! :D
Click to expand...

Great!!! Thanks all you guys, even those of you who provided the entertainment :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X