Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

USBDeview - Guaranteed eject of your USB drive

<< < (5/5)

wraith808:
Is such an utility really necessary ? Aren't FAT32 storage devices optimized for quick removal by default ? I just unplug mine as soon as any writing operation is complete. Any of you NTFS formatting drives?
-direnc (March 21, 2008, 01:03 PM)
--- End quote ---

Why yes, all of my usb drives that are over 4GB are NTFS formatted...and I get this problem in *many* cases when I want to remove my portable drives from systems.  So this is a godsend.

f0dder:
Sounds like a somewhat dangerous utility - the reason you get the "can't be removed right now" message in the first place, is because some application is "using" the drive. Granted, most of the time it might just be a thread that has it's current working folder on the drive for some reason, which is pretty harmless, but other times you could risk filesystem corruption.

I wonder if such a "forcibly eject" application is actually any safer than simply unplugging the device?

I use NTFS and "optimize for speed" with my external drives, so I'm a bit paranoid about doing things the right way :)

PhilB66:
@f0dder

USBDeview has a "Safe To Unplug" column. See USBDeview page and scroll down for the "USBDeview Columns Description" section.

icekin:
@icekin

Try with Unlocker (http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/) first to unlock any file/process handles and then eject the device.
-PhilB66 (March 21, 2008, 09:38 AM)
--- End quote ---

Is there a way to have a FARR shortcut that will automatically unlock using Unlocker and then eject the USB device?

Somehow, it doesn't quite work for me. I added the alias, but running the command after bringing up FARR does nothing. :(-icekin (March 21, 2008, 08:52 AM)
--- End quote ---
Ok, this is a bit weird, but it seems that on my system USBDEVIEW actually lists the wrong drive letter for my usb portable. Did you check to see if this might be the case for you too?

I use USBDLM to manage drive letters, and my Cruzer micro drive is always assigned to G: but for some reason it's listed as K: in USBDEVIEW. So 'eject G' won't work whereas 'eject K' works although the drive is definitely assigned to G...
-TucknDar (March 21, 2008, 09:13 AM)
--- End quote ---

My problem is that I am not trying to eject a single drive, but a group of them. I use an external hard drive that had 5 partitions which are labelled drives G: to K:

In USBDeview, I can just locate the USB 2.0 Mass storage device and hit F9 eject. The FARR alias only allows me to eject a single drive and that too doesn't work :( My current solution has been to place a shortcut to USBDeView in my start menu, call it up with FARR each time, use the arrow keys to navigate to the device and then press F9.

cranioscopical:
I am not trying to eject a single drive, but a group of them
--- End quote ---

I know this is inelegant but couldn't you just write an old-fashioned batch file using USBDeview's command-line options
and call that from Farr?

USBD will show you the serial #s of G: to K: so you could just use 5 lines of the kind

usbdeview /stop_by_serial [serial number of G: here]
 .
 .
 .
usbdeview /stop_by_serial [serial number of K: here]

That way, if something shifts your drive letters around you'll still stop the external drive.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page