How do I eject the external USB hard disk from my computer?

Q Recently, after I had finished using my external hard disk I attempted to eject the device by using the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the Notification Area.

However, Vista displayed a message suggesting that the USB device was still in use and that it could not be stopped at this time. It suggested I close all other programs and try again.

However, no other programs were running and, even after I restarted the PC, the problem remained. How can I safely remove the hard disk?
John Martin

A Sadly, this is a reasonably common problem in Windows and the cause isn’t always easy to trace.

Even something as seemingly innocuous as having a certain file highlighted in Windows Explorer can be enough to convince Windows that, at some level, a particular device is ‘in use’.

So shutting down all open applications offers no guarantee that the Safely Remove Hardware tool will play nicely.

However, another cause – and one that we think likely in your case – is that the disk has been included for indexing by Windows.

This indexing is designed to speed up Start menu searches in Vista (and Windows 7 for that matter) but it takes place when the PC is otherwise idle, so the drive could be in use even when you think the computer is at rest.

To check, right-click the drive in Windows Explorer, choose Properties and, on the General tab, look to see if the ‘Index this drive for faster searching’ box is ticked. If so, click to remove it. Now try ejecting once more via Safely Remove Hardware.

If this doesn’t solve the problem, there is at least one safe way to remove such a device: shut down the PC. Windows is not able to tell you that this is a safe time to disconnect an external drive (because it will itself no longer be running) but with the power off, nothing will be using the disk.