Retrospect Disk-to-Disk - How do I "safely remove" my external USB HD?

[atstern]

Hi there, I'm an "IT Manager" by default for our small company. We have a new server (SBS 2003 R2 for apps, files, faxing, backup, etc.) and are using Retrospect Disk-to-Disk v 7.5 with two WD MyBook Pro external USB hard drives. I am swithching them our every Monday so that I can take an up-to-date backup set offsite. The folks at EMC had me reformat the drives to NTFS and, in doing so, the "Safely Stop Hardware" functionallity has stopped working. When I attempt to "Stop" the HD to swap it out, windows tells me that "The devide 'WD 5000AAKS External USB Device' cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later." I assume that this occurs because something is accessing the HD, but I cannot tell what it is using task manager. The only work around seems to be a "forced" shutdown on the drive via the 4-seconds on the power button method, which WD tech support advised as "not ideal". So, has anyone experienced this ? I found the media->handling->Stop Removable Storage Manager checked in Retrospect preferences...is this causing my problem and if so, can I uncheck it to resolve? Is there any danger in doing so? Thanks for your help!! Aaron

[AmyJ]

Try downloading Process Explorer:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Processesandthreadsutilities.mspx?wt.svl=featured

 

You can use it to search handles. Search for your drive letter to see if something is holding it open. I experienced this problem with Google Desktop indexing my drive.

[atstern]

Thanks for the suggestion...gave it a try and no processes are holding the drive open :-( Any other thoughts? Do you think I'm safe to continue to use the forced power-down option? I don't feel comfortable not knowing why the drive won't stop. Thanks!

[Burner2]

I have always had the same problem with my Maxtor II external USB drive. I cannot stop it. But, since it is only on a single computer, I assume there is no problem just shutting down the whole system and unplugging the USB drive.

 

I tried runnning the Process Explorer but I am afraid the results were over my pay-grade from a technical point of view. I did see a process called Retrorun in the list but I could not tell if it was engaged or not.

 

My more urgent problem is that I have previously posted a thread about reformatting my disk and restoring from the backup and I have gotten no responses. Tomorrow (Monday Sept 10) is D-day. In fact, I also posted another thread on 8/07/07 and got no responses so unfortunately, I am not overly impressed with the amount of support on this forum. Since everyone is a volunteer, I guess I get what I pay for.

 

Tom