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Windows "safely remove device" thingie

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Armando:
Coming back to the 'remove device' icon, the 'unplug thingy'...
Some have said that, sometimes, Windows won't allow them to remove or unplug the device.
Well, it happens to me fairly frequently (at least twice a week) with my external hard drives.
I've tried everything : sysinternal handle app., closing all the opened programs, chosing the 'optimize for quick removal' option, etc.

What I now do -- when I don't want to sit for two hours in front of my laptop for Windows to finaly decide when it's safe to remove my device (!) -- is that I put my laptop in hibernation or standby mode, and  then remove the HDs: sometimes, just putting it IN and then OUT of standby will allow me to safely remove the device, but... *most of the time*, it won't, and I'll just remove the device while the computer is 'off'.

UNtil now, I haven't had any 'corruption' problems. But the fear of having to deal with that problem is still there.
What do you guys think off my workaround? Do you think filesystem cache would be flushed, and device being, hum, unmounted more cleanly ?  :)
Is it safer than just unplugging the damn external HDs while the computer is on ? I'd hope so... But.

f0dder:
Well, if you shut down your computer it's safe... I assume it's the same with hibernate.

Armando:
Thanks, f0dder.
I thought Hibernate would be very similar to standby. Only suspending to disk instead of RAM.
So, if you believe that hibernating mode would be safe to unplug the devices, what about standby?

f0dder:
I should think so...

but when you need to do this "semi-forceful" removal, do run sysinternals' sync.exe. Shouldn't really be necessary when you do suspend/standby/whatever, I'm pretty sure windows does flush it's filesystem cache when you do that, but it doesn't hurt playing it as safe as you can.

Armando:
Yup. Good advice.
Thanks.
So, that would be good news to all of us who suffer from that MS "bug" with the "unplug thingy":

1- Sync.exe,
2- than just go to standby mode, unplug,
3- and wake up your computer again.

Less than 20s. Problem approximately solved... I guess.

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