USB drives are unplugged, but still in My Computer for a while

I have a Dell Inspiron with factory installed Win 7 Home Premium. I have several WD External USB hard drives that worked well on my old XP laptop.

Two things cause the problems in the title: I will be transferring files and it will just stop and suddenly the drive is no longer working. I can still see it in my computer, but none of the files are accessible. Eventually (randomly) the drives disappear from my computer. The second way it happens is if I manually unplug the drive, it will still show up in my computer. Also, like I said, eventually they do disappear.

But then, I cannot get them to be recognized if I plug them back in, unless I reboot.

Is this a Win 7 bug with WD drives? I don't remember this much trouble with XP.

No answer to this? I am still having this problem.

Plug out all USB drives from your computer and then run Microsoft's USB Fix it. Check whether it resolves your problem.

USB Fix It: Official Microsoft Tool To Repair Removable Device Issues

No, that did not fix my problem, but thanks.

OK, Do you have any non-WD external drive? Try one and check whether that also has the same problem. ( If you do not have one you may borrow one from your friend but take care not to wipe away his data.:).)

or

Perform this trial on one Western Digital drive. Backup all data on it to another drive/s and format it with HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool (run as administrator) to remove any crapware that came with it. Try this freshly reformatted drive on your Windows 7 PC. Check whether it still exhibits the same problem.

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool Free Download

Ok I will try that if I can find enough room on other drives.

I just tried the drive on my old XP laptop and it works just fine. So this must be a Win 7 issue. The USB ports are working ok for printers and media card readers, so I don't think it's a computer problem.