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How to "eject" an internal HDD allowing you to (relatively) safely remove it from a powered PC.

Vitalius
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Hi guys,

This tutorial applies for any version of Windows from XP onward in regards to the actual program. However, finding it on XP can be difficult as it lacks the search box on the start menu that Vista onward has. 

You know how you can eject external USB devices? Flash drives, external HDD's and such, so that when you remove them, nothing bad happens? 

The same can be done with an internal HDD. Thus allowing you to remove it without powering down your computer with minimal risk. 

Firstly, you want to press the start button. Then type Disk into the search box and click "Create and format Hard disk partitions". Illustrated here:

11292349926_1783cb4a27_o.png

Then, you want to right click the disk you wish to eject (usually you can tell by size, but if you have multiple ones of the same size, right click and click explore to make sure it's the one you want), then click "Offline". Then I give it about 30 seconds to power down, and I remove the HDD. Illustrated here:

11292377014_1fd8c341d2_o.png

You can also use this program to partition HDD's, create Virtual HDD's (outside of a Virtual Machine), and format drives. 

However, I don't think many know about the Offline feature of this program. I think it's pretty cool honestly. 

Hope this helps those with limited time or special conditions who need such a thing (i.e. you can't turn off the computer, but need to remove an HDD for something, or your lazy, like me :P).

I do not suggest installing an HDD while a PC is powered on. I've created many bricks by trying that. 90% of the time it works, but ... losing 500GB worth of data (my personal experience) due to a burned out PCB just sucks. 

Anyway, hope you learned something.

Vitalius.

 

† Christian Member †

For my pertinent links to guides, reviews, and anything similar, go here, and look under the spoiler labeled such. A brief history of Unix and it's relation to OS X by Builder.

 

 

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@Vitalius

 

That is really helpful. I will hop on the LiteCoin mining train very soon (pretty late though after all) and i want to shut off as many things as i can while mining at night, so the parts won't wear out and to save some power.

 

I have all my games and one or two programs installed on my HDD, will the HDD turn on (go online) after reboot and show up again? Also will it work seamlesly, so no data corruption apears after reconect? e.g. unconected icons.

 

Edit: other example of dailure: my music is stored on the HDD, my media player is on the SSD and if i start it and it doesn't find the songs, will it find them when i power the hdd on again? 

who cares...

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Posted

Useful tip. I've been wondering about this one for a while :)

Feel free to message me if you want to chat!

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Posted

my motherboard has a hotswap feature once i enable it on selected sata ports devices plugged to these ports will be inserted as a removeable device :P but this is also good to know

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@Vitalius

 

That is really helpful. I will hop on the LiteCoin mining train very soon (pretty late though after all) and i want to shut off as many things as i can while mining at night, so the parts won't wear out and to save some power.

 

I have all my games and one or two programs installed on my HDD, will the HDD turn on (go online) after reboot and show up again? Also will it work seamlesly, so no data corruption apears after reconect? e.g. unconected icons.

 

Edit: other example of dailure: my music is stored on the HDD, my media player is on the SSD and if i start it and it doesn't find the songs, will it find them when i power the hdd on again? 

Glad I could help. That is a good idea to save on usage.  (See here.)

After reboot? Yes. (See here.) You can also just turn the HDD back online the same way you turned it offline (except, click Online), and it will work like it was never removed. 

Yes, it will probably give an error if you are trying to copy files or using a program on the drive though. Try not to do that. lol 

And yes, it will see all your music on the HDD. You probably will just need to close the media player and reopen it. I will test it when I get home and let you know.

 

Useful tip. I've been wondering about this one for a while :)

Awesome. Glad it was useful.

† Christian Member †

For my pertinent links to guides, reviews, and anything similar, go here, and look under the spoiler labeled such. A brief history of Unix and it's relation to OS X by Builder.

 

 

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If all one wants to do is power down a drive, it would be simpler to adjust the Windows Power Options and have hard disks powered off after x minutes of inactivity.

80+ ratings certify electrical efficiency. Not quality.

 

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If all one wants to do is power down a drive, it would be simpler to adjust the Windows Power Options and have hard disks powered off after x minutes of inactivity?

For that, yeah. That'd be simpler. However, this is for removing the HDD. Which is something you sometimes don't want to wait on.

Plus, after you set it to offline, it stays that way until you tell it otherwise. Even after a reboot. I was wrong. After a reboot, or even after uninstalling and reinstalling the HDD into the case, it is set to offline until you set it back to online. 

† Christian Member †

For my pertinent links to guides, reviews, and anything similar, go here, and look under the spoiler labeled such. A brief history of Unix and it's relation to OS X by Builder.

 

 

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Plus, after you set it to offline, it stays that way until you tell it otherwise. Even after a reboot. I was wrong. After a reboot, or even after uninstalling and reinstalling the HDD into the case, it is set to offline until you set it back to online. 

 

Does the procedure actually power down the drive or simply unmount it?

80+ ratings certify electrical efficiency. Not quality.

 

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Does the procedure actually power down the drive or simply unmount it?

Well, now I feel bonkers. 

Offline doesn't do what I thought it did. Mind you my guide is still true as it does the equivalent of what I said, but I am wrong in that it doesn't power the drive down. I would use the feature of power options you mentioned for that.

Offline is more so for dynamic volumes. Which are basically RAID or JBOD arrays. Where a single volume can exist over multiple disks. So you'd make one disk come offline to replace another one.

This doesn't power down the disk, but does remove it from the RAID/JBOD array so that it doesn't interfere with it (i.e. make it corrupt or fail when you remove the HDD). 

So it's effectively the same as ejecting your USB drive. But I thought it would cause the drive to power down as well. Apparently not (mine was set to offline a while ago, still spinning). That seems like a very .. large error on MS's part. I see no reason to have it powered if we can't access it. That makes no sense. 

I don't know if Windows' power settings would even affect the disk if it were set to offline since it's basically not attached to the Windows system in all ways but in Disk Management. Weird. 

† Christian Member †

For my pertinent links to guides, reviews, and anything similar, go here, and look under the spoiler labeled such. A brief history of Unix and it's relation to OS X by Builder.

 

 

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Considering how often the "safe to remove" bull corrupts files on my thumb drives I don't think I'll ever be doing this with a HDD.

-The Bellerophon- Obsidian 550D-i5-3570k@4.5Ghz -Asus Sabertooth Z77-16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 1866Mhz-x2 EVGA GTX 760 Dual FTW 4GB-Creative Sound Blaster XF-i Titanium-OCZ Vertex Plus 120GB-Seagate Barracuda 2TB- https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/60154-the-not-really-a-build-log-build-log/ Twofold http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/121043-twofold-a-dual-itx-system/ How great is EVGA? http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/110662-evga-how-great-are-they/#entry1478299

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Considering how often the "safe to remove" bull corrupts files on my thumb drives I don't think I'll ever be doing this with a HDD.

Well, I'm just comparing them. They aren't necessarily the same.

† Christian Member †

For my pertinent links to guides, reviews, and anything similar, go here, and look under the spoiler labeled such. A brief history of Unix and it's relation to OS X by Builder.

 

 

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  • 6 years later...
Posted

The option is not there in Windows 10 ):

image.png.eef6153e3347ebfec941c97ec98ae01e.png

An updated solution pretty please?!

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  • 11 months later...
Posted
On 3/31/2020 at 12:48 AM, BeterQuendo said:

The option is not there in Windows 10 ):

image.png.eef6153e3347ebfec941c97ec98ae01e.png

An updated solution pretty please?!

https://www.qualitestgroup.com/resources/knowledge-center/how-to-guide/offlineonline-disk-using-diskpart/

 

You can use DISKPART command, but it does not SPIN DOWN the disk!

 

Any ideas how to do it?

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