"BillW50" wrote in message
...
In ,
Jo-Anne wrote:
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!

Hi Jo-Anne! Yes if Explorer is looking at the drive you want to remove,
Windows will tell you that it can't right now. So if you select another
drive to look at in Explorer, this should now allow Windows to safely
remove it.

Logging off? Yes logging off is like rebooting, except it logs you out of
Windows and returns you back to the Windows logon screen. This closes all
applications and when you log back into Windows again, you should have no
trouble safely removing any removable drive.

Acronis True Image? I have ATI Home 2009 and 2011. And both versions are
nearly the same. Sorry I bought the 2011 version now. And ATI has trouble
with restoring from some USB drives. So I don't trust ATI too much.

I have better luck most of the time with Paragon (they have free versions
too, but I have lots of registered ones from them too). Paragon also has
adaptive restore (allows moving Windows to another machine), drive
alignment, and can clone the drive you are using while Windows is still
running.

ATI has the same thing as adaptive restore. Although it only comes with
the expensive Plus version or pack or whatever you want to call it. ATI
doesn't have drive alignment yet (very important on SSD drives), nor can
clone a drive while Windows is running.

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

Thank you again, Bill! I'll check into Paragon. Although I bought two copies
of ATI, I learned on one of the newsgroups that it's free if you buy certain
brands of external drives, including Western Digital, which is what I use.
On my latest computer, I installed the free version, and I don't see any
real difference between it and my paid-for one.

I've never logged off; but it's good to know that that should release my
hard drive if the occasion arises again.

Jo-Anne