USB Western Digital External HD Help

My curt, possibly unhelpful, but honest comment is simply don't use WD hard drives; not using them will save you a lot of headache in the future.

I lost a small amount of data (most all was backed up) on one that fail and from experience find them inexpensive (their main and only allure, of why they're so common), but incredibly cheap and poor at their main functionality: actually holding, storing, and reliably retrieving data!

johntkucz said:

My curt, possibly unhelpful, but honest comment is simply don't use WD hard drives; not using them will save you a lot of headache in the future.

I lost a small amount of data (most all was backed up) on one that fail and from experience find them inexpensive (their main and only allure, of why they're so common), but incredibly cheap and poor at their main functionality: actually holding, storing, and reliably retrieving data!

What has the safely eject problem got to do with WD drives?
I've got a Seagate but mainly WD drives.
They are all high precision, mass produced cheap devices. They can all fail - the 3.5 inch drives can get too hot with heavy use etc.
My advice: NEVER have anything important stored on just one single external HDD never mind the brand. This includes system images.

JennB213 said:

Hello mjf,

Well at this point I was willing to try anything ..
What an aggravation this is.
This same External Hard Drive ejects perfectly on Windows XP.

I tried your little tip went into Windows Explorer >
the External HD >
Browsed around in a folder >
Went to the Menu Bar and used the Close from there.

Went back to the little Remove Safely Icon ..
NO DICE, wouldn't work .. DURN, Durn, durn

...................................

Thanks for the response Jenn. It only works occasionally for me a well. Restart always works.
I'd like the magic bullet as well. Safely ejecting without interrupting some unknown but maybe important process.