USB drives wont eject.

This sometimes happens to me in Vista.
I make sure it's not being written to and then remove it despite the message and I haven't had any corruption so far.
I would be interested to hear what others think.

i'm experiencing the same issue with both esata and a usb thumb drive. even though all processes relating to the devices appear closed, it refuses to eject them.
i can workaround as suggested above for the thumb drive but there is no 'eject' option via 'my computer' for the esata drives, so i'm forced to power down to eject.
using a j micron jmb36x chip and have tried the latest drivers but to no avail.

nope, no readyboost here.

This is a problem that appeared with Vista and I see that it is also there in Windows 7. It looks like, if you connect it for an extended period of time (a couple of hours), Windows "will take possession" of the drive. I don't know what exactly is running on it though.

Desactivating the ReadyBoost service can help and, if there is a defragment service it can help too.

When it happens to me, even if I would make sure everything is closed (even an explorer) and loging off and come back on, it wouldn't do it. I had to reboot to be able to eject. Also, this far, instead of rebooting, why not close it and remove it (USB drive) while the PC is off and then turning on the PC again? Simply EXTREMELY annoying.