Safely remove removable drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mark Bourne
  • Start date Start date
M

Mark Bourne

How can I safely remove a single removable drive from Vista?

In Windows 2000, I clicked the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the
system tray and selected the drive I wanted to remove. In Vista, all
removable drives are listed against the USB host controller:
Safely remove Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller -
Drives(A:, F:, G:, H:, I:, J:,K:)
Click to expand...

How can I remove just one drive (say, K:, which is a USB flash drive)
without stopping the other drives, and the entire USB controller!?

I am using a Belkin USB 2.0 PCMCIA card and D-Link DUB-H7 hubs. I have
not installed any vendor-specific drivers for these devices, nor for the
drives concerned (ie. the above devices are using drivers included with
Vista).

I have installed all updates listed by Windows Update.
 
In Vista, it should be the same. You should be able to select the drive
under the USB Host Controller, and hit Stop and stop only that drive. Does
it not let you select them individually?

I know that it should (at least with my hardware, which does include a
couple hubs)...

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--
 
Dustin said:
In Vista, it should be the same. You should be able to select the drive
under the USB Host Controller, and hit Stop and stop only that drive.
Does it not let you select them individually?

I know that it should (at least with my hardware, which does include a
couple hubs)...
Click to expand...

Nope. If I click the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon and select "Safely
remove Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller - Drives(A:, F:, G:,
H:, I:, J:,K:)", the entire USB card is stopped, all USB devices are
stopped, and I have to unplug and reinsert the card to continue using
them. The drives are not listed separately. The only other items in the
list of hardware to remove are:
- Two copies of "NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller" (the low- and
full-speed controllers on the card) and
- The CD R/W drive which is in the laptop's drive bay

Could the problem here be caused by using a PCMCIA USB card? Or maybe
the drivers provided with Vista for that card are not quite right? I'll
see if I can find any other drivers for it anyway, but thanks for at
least confirming that it should work as I expected!
 
Mark Bourne said:
How can I safely remove a single removable drive from Vista?

In Windows 2000, I clicked the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the system
tray and selected the drive I wanted to remove. In Vista, all removable
drives are listed against the USB host controller:

How can I remove just one drive (say, K:, which is a USB flash drive)
without stopping the other drives, and the entire USB controller!?
Click to expand...

I do not have the ability to test this right now but have you tried clicking
the check box in the bottom right which says "Display Device Components" on
the "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog?
 
just said:
I do not have the ability to test this right now but have you tried
clicking the check box in the bottom right which says "Display Device
Components" on the "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog?
Click to expand...

I hadn't, but just did. That displays all the drives (and other devices)
separately in a tree in the dialog. However, selecting one of the drives
and clicking "Stop" brings up another dialog, saying that "Windows will
attempt to stop the following devices...", and lists ALL devices plugged
into that USB controller, as well as the controller itself. ie. the
overall effect is the same as if I hadn't checked that box and just
stopped the controller anyway.

Checking that box makes no difference to the menu produced by
single-left-clicking the system tray icon.
 
I hadn't, but just did. That displays all the drives (and other devices)
separately in a tree in the dialog. However, selecting one of the drives
and clicking "Stop" brings up another dialog, saying that "Windows will
attempt to stop the following devices...", and lists ALL devices plugged
into that USB controller, as well as the controller itself. ie. the
overall effect is the same as if I hadn't checked that box and just
stopped the controller anyway.

Checking that box makes no difference to the menu produced by
single-left-clicking the system tray icon.
Click to expand...

For mine I can click the safely remove hardware icon which of course opens
it up, then click on the USB icon, which then opens and shows me what is
plugged in at that time in all USB ports. All I have to do then is click the
one I want to remove and it lets me. Or go into the My Computer, where it
will show you all the drives and click on the one you want to remove and hit
eject. Either of those options works for me. But I am finding the more I
read about VISTA in these groups it seems more of the problems are people
that have updated to VISTA and not purchasing new computers with it on,
which is what I have.
 
Mark said:
How can I safely remove a single removable drive from Vista?

In Windows 2000, I clicked the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the
system tray and selected the drive I wanted to remove. In Vista, all
removable drives are listed against the USB host controller:

How can I remove just one drive (say, K:, which is a USB flash drive)
without stopping the other drives, and the entire USB controller!?

I am using a Belkin USB 2.0 PCMCIA card and D-Link DUB-H7 hubs. I have
not installed any vendor-specific drivers for these devices, nor for the
drives concerned (ie. the above devices are using drivers included with
Vista).

I have installed all updates listed by Windows Update.
Click to expand...

After a bit of experimentation, I have found the following...
- if I plug a single, external hard disk directly into the USB card, it
is listed as a separate item in the "Safely Remove Hardware" list and
can be stopped separately from the USB card.
- if I plug that same drive in via one of the D-Link hubs, with no other
hardware plugged into the hub nor the other USB port of the card, the
drive letter is listed by the USB Host Controller as described in my
original post, and stopping it requires that the USB card is also stopped.

This suggests (to me) that the problem has something to do with the
hubs. However, these use the standard "Generic USB Hub" driver, and as
far as I know there are no specific drivers for them. Under Windows 2000
the hubs were also using the generic driver. Unfortunately I don't have
any other hubs to try, otherwise I would.

By the way, this is a clean install of Vista Business, on an existing
laptop, so there is no OEM junk or drivers/software from the previous OS
to cause problems. The previous OS (Windows 2000) is still installed on
another partition, and dual-booted with Vista, although I can't see that
being a problem.
 
Debra said:
For mine I can click the safely remove hardware icon which of course opens
it up, then click on the USB icon, which then opens and shows me what is
plugged in at that time in all USB ports. All I have to do then is click the
one I want to remove and it lets me. Or go into the My Computer, where it
will show you all the drives and click on the one you want to remove and hit
eject. Either of those options works for me. But I am finding the more I
read about VISTA in these groups it seems more of the problems are people
that have updated to VISTA and not purchasing new computers with it on,
which is what I have.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. Ejecting the drive from My Computer doesn't seem to
give any notification that it is safe to remove the drive, so I'm not
sure if that works or not. Also, one of the drives is an external hard
disk, which is listed under "Hard Disk Drives" rather than "Devices with
Removable Storage", and doesn't have an Eject option. I do occasionally
(though admittedly not often) remove that drive for transferring large
files between machines.

I have done a clean install of Vista Business on an existing laptop.
Hence there is no interference from the old OS, as there could be from
an upgrade. Although it has not been set up by the OEM, as a new
computer with Vista pre-installed would have been.
 
I believe that most of the USB issues noted in this forum for Vista upgrades
all point to the Enhanced Host Controller driver also known as high-speed or
USB 2.0. After installing Vista Home Premium on my HP m7658n PC with Media
Center and trying to access the USB ports, I noticed quickly something was
wrong. All the USB hubs quit working and card reader drives started
disappearing. I finally figured out how to get around it until someone post
an updated Enhanced Host Controller driver. Just disable the Enhanced Host
Controller driver in Device Manager and everything comes back and works
flawlessly but at USB 1.1 speed.
 
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