I've never had a problem just unplugging USB hard drives, so if  you continue to get that error message, just unplug it (after making sure nothing's being written to it of course) :emotion-5:

Dugrok

I have the same problem with one of my desktops, what I do, is reboot the system and then disconnect the external hard drive,

Yes, it's a pain, but so far I've not found an answer to the error.    :emotion-6:

Bev.

I've found an answer to the external hard drive disconnect error message that may or may not apply to your systems, depending on whether you have the offending program installed. Since we've all got Dells though there is a good chance that it is the same program. I've also included how to check if it's not the same program.

Here's a quick synopsis: I was getting the same error message so I started Googling (<-- foreshadowing) for an answer. I found this thread on the Tech Support Guy forum that talked about the Policies tab in Device Manager for my external hard drive. I looked at mine and found that it was set to Optimize for quick removal which indicates that there should be no problem trying to remove the drive and in fact it is removable when set like this w/o using the Safely Remove Hardware option (or so it says). I decided not to test that theory and wanted to find a way to safely remove it. So based on this, using the Safely Remove Hardware option should work but it wasn't so I searched some more and found a post that mentioned a program called Unlocker, which some of you may have heard of already, that helps delete files still in use. I downloaded Unlocker from Download.com and ran it by right-clicking on the external drive in Computer (this is on a Vista PC) and choosing the Unlocker option.

This is where it gets interesting. It showed that Google Desktop (GD) was accessing the external drive. So Dugrok you were on the right track but the wrong program when you mentioned the Vista indexing. In my case it was GD doing the indexing. So I turned off the GD indexing (the sidebar was already turned off) and tried again. It still didn't work. I ended up having to uninstall GD completely to get it to work correctly. Vista indexing apparently doesn't cause a problem as far as I can tell. I am now able to use the Safely Remove Hardware option to uninstall my external hard drive. So the moral is that Google Desktop can be causing the issue on your systems if you have it installed. If you don't then you can use Unlocker to see if there is another program accessing the external drive.

One thing I want to mention that happened when I did this process. After uninstalling Google Desktop it said that there were some files still in use but they would be taken care of when the computer was restarted. After the restart my Safely Remove Hardware icon was missing in the taskbar. I almost panicked. What you want to do if this happens is to right-click on your external drive in Computer and choose Safely Remove. This will bring the icon back.

Another thing to check is to make sure that you are trying to remove the correct drive letter when using Safely Remove. Keep in mind that if you plug in a USB flash drive or any other storage peripheral that your drive letters will change. I had a flash drive inserted and almost removed the wrong device. You can tell for sure what is what when you remove by double-clicking on the Safely Remove Hardware icon and checking the box that says Display Device Components. I mention this, Dugrok, because you had two drive letters showing so unless you've partitioned your external drive into two partitions then that is probably not it.

I hope this helps.

It's the old hard drive from inside my laptop that I turned into an external, for that reason it is partitioned. 

As for Google Desktop, I have nothing remotely resembling such a program installed. I  did however try Unlocker to go find what was trying to access. It appears something called svchost.exe is the culprit. I've seen this process on my computer since I bought it, but I have no idea what it does. 

I tried using the "Unlock all" (there were 3 processes) but to no avail. I then decided to kill the processes and see if that might work. I then realized that those are responsible for the lovely graphic effects of Vista. So I don't think they're related. I've got flickering programs now, but I'm sure it's nothing a reboot won't fix. Even after killing these processes on both partitions, I still couldn't "safely remove" the hardware. Any other theories?

I have no other suggestions regarding your problem I'm afraid, but you'll find an explanation of those unknown svchost.exe processes here.

i have a similar issue sometimes with my usb flash/thumb drives. in windows explorer, go to 'computer.' click once on the drive name, then cleck 'eject.' do this also if there is a cd (like ativa or cruzer). then you can 'safely remove hardware' again.

as i said, i do this with my usb flashdrive, so not sure if it works the same for external hds, but the logic makes sense that it should.

 crondias

I've been using USB Ejector to safely remove USB connected devices, pen drives and hard drives.

It works with both Vista and XP.

Bev.