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.