Windows 10 Problems ejecting External Hard Drives

[Jimkirk363]

I wonder if someone can help me this is driving me nuts, i cannot eject any external media being a hard disk or a thumb drive.

 

I go to safely remove hardware and choose the drive i wish to disconnect, it disappears from the list and nothing more yet there's still power going to the drives.

 

The only way i can disconnect is to turn off PC and do it that way which is a pain in the rear end, anyone have anything i can try?

[Windows7ge]

There's no "Safe To Remove Hardware" pop-up?

 

The device should still be lit up since it's always going to be receiving 5V power. It wouldn't make sense to me for Safe Eject to disable that.

 

For as much of a non-recommended practice it is to just pull the drive when you're done I've been doing that for more than 10 years now and I still have yet to kill a drive or ruin any data.

 

Of course I only do this to my own stuff at my own risk. I don't subject others hardware to my bad habits.

[kompetenzbolzen]

This sounds like normal behaviour. As long as it disappears in windows, you should be fine to disconnect it.

Windows will and can not disconnect power to a device, all it is doing is finishing all write operations and flushing the cache. 

[Jimkirk363]

30 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

There's no "Safe To Remove Hardware" pop-up?

 

The device should still be lit up since it's always going to be receiving 5V power. It wouldn't make sense to me for Safe Eject to disable that.

 

For as much of a non-recommended practice it is to just pull the drive when you're done I've been doing that for more than 10 years now and I still have yet to kill a drive or ruin any data.

 

Of course I only do this to my own stuff at my own risk. I don't subject others hardware to my bad habits.

No theres no safe to remove hardware popup at all and as i said power still goes to the drives meaning its unsafe to disconnect.

 

23 minutes ago, kompetenzbolzen said:

This sounds like normal behaviour. As long as it disappears in windows, you should be fine to disconnect it.

Windows will and can not disconnect power to a device, all it is doing is finishing all write operations and flushing the cache. 

NO! its not safe to disconnect as power still goes to the drive and its not at all normal behavior i don't know where u got that from?

[kompetenzbolzen]

6 minutes ago, jimkirk363 said:

NO! its not safe to disconnect as power still goes to the drive and its not at all normal behavior i don't know where u got that from?

USB power is hardwired. 

whether it spins down when ejected is up to the driver and hdd controller.

 

Power to the device does not mean it's unsafe to remove, unfinished writes is what kills data.

And for HDDs, since the head is parked when it's idling (which it does after being unmounted), i wouldn't expect any physical damage, since the head isn't on the platter when power is lost.

[Windows7ge]

28 minutes ago, jimkirk363 said:

No theres no safe to remove hardware popup at all and as i said power still goes to the drives meaning its unsafe to disconnect.

Well, unfortunately I can't really help you here as I'm not familiar with the intricacies of that component of Windows.

29 minutes ago, jimkirk363 said:

NO! its not safe to disconnect as power still goes to the drive and its not at all normal behavior i don't know where u got that from?

Years of not having the habit result in consequence. It's hard to follow rules or proper procedure unless you know there's consequence. As I said, 10+ years now of this bad habit have not result in me killing a drive or losing any data. That's where this behavior of mine has come from. I don't put effort into things I don't see getting something out of. If I safely remove or don't safely remove and in either situation I find my hardware & data are fine why should I put in the extra effort?

 

I am not encouraging you to submit to my bad habit but I am suggesting that it's not the end of all things if you can't eject your drives safely.

[Lenovo1984]

49 minutes ago, jimkirk363 said:

No theres no safe to remove hardware popup at all and as i said power still goes to the drives meaning its unsafe to disconnect.

 

NO! its not safe to disconnect as power still goes to the drive and its not at all normal behavior i don't know where u got that from?

Yes, that is safe and normal. Power will always be going to the drive, you can't stop that. 

[Jimkirk363]

42 minutes ago, Lenovo1984 said:

Yes, that is safe and normal. Power will always be going to the drive, you can't stop that. 

Strange that because if i try and unplug using the safe way on my laptop it powers down so yes u can stop power to the drive.