Disconnecting External USB devices?

I HAVE TWO INTERNAL AND ONE EXTERNAL DRIVES ON MY COMPUTER.WHEN I TRY TO DISCONNECT THE EXTERNAL DRIVE THRU MY SYSTEM TRAY I GET A MESSAGE THAT SAYS,PROBLEM STOPPING DEVICE ,THE DEVICE USB DISK CANNOT BE STOPPED RIGHT NOW. TRY STOPPING THE DEVICE AGAIN LATER. WHEN I TRY LATER THE SAME MESSAGE APPEARS. ANY IDEAS ON HOW TO DISCONNECT THE EXTERNAL DRIVE WITHOUT PULLING THE PLUG OUT. THANK YOU: RAY

This question was answered on January 20, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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Sometimes when you have USB devices such as hard-drives, zip-drive, and memory sticks if a program is still reading or has a file from the device open Windows will not let you disconnect from that drive If you are loading anything from the external drive into memory then that would not allow you to physically see a program running on the desktop, yet restict you from disconnecting the drive.

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Posted by Student of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on January 20, 2004

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