Thank you, Bill and Tester! (I didn't receive Tester's post in Outlook
Express; I don't know why...) When you say to select another drive, do you
mean to double click on another one and then check Safely Remove Hardware
again? And what does logging off and in again mean--just that I should exit
Safely Remove Hardware and then bring it up again?

In the past, I've had particular trouble with Acronis True Image. One time,
it didn't "release" the external drive for over 4 hours, even though the
drive light was solid the whole time. That's the point when I started making
sure that my external drives were set for optimizing for quick removal.

Thank you again!

Jo-Anne


"BillW50" wrote in message
...
In ,
Tester wrote:
Yes it is a good practice to do so. In a situation where you get that
message, I normally log off and then login again to see if all the
processes have finished doing what they were doing.

HD is HD and you can't afford to take risks with it. Better 5 minutes
late than sorry!

hth

Jo-Anne wrote:
Using WinXP. If I have my external hard drive set to "optimize for
quick removal," do I still have to use "Safely Remove Hardware"? I
have been doing so, and often it will say for several minutes that
the drive can't be removed.

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

It is true, better safe than sorry. I have done it both ways and I don't
know, one out of 30 maybe, the file system will become corrupt if you
don't safety remove hardware. Then you have to run Chkdsk to fix it.

When it won't let you, some program is using the device. For me, Explorer
is usually holding it up. So I select another drive and then it normally
releases ok.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo 1.83G - 2GB - Windows XP SP3