External hard drives keep running after Safely Remove

[catalogue]

Recently my external hard drive started to keep running after I go to the taskbar and click Safely Remove Hardware > Eject External USB > Notification says you can safely removed it. The light on the HD is on and you can hear the disk spinning. I don't think they used to do that. Is it safe to unplug them when this happens?

Don't know if it makes any difference but I use a third-party file manager called Xplorer2 but I have had it for many years and haven't changed anything and I don't have any new software that has anything to do with external drives.

 

[billmcct]

You really don't need to use the Safely Remove Hardware option since Windows 7 doesn't use delayed write on external drives.
As long as the light on the hard drive isn't flashing, just unplug it.

 

[catalogue]

OK thanks - but I gotta say it sounds to good to be true. Maybe I was traumatized by Win 95 and it imprinted a need to walk on eggshells around certain things on Windows that are no longer problems.

 

[billmcct]

Every external drive is set to "Quick Removal (default)" under hard drive properties "Policies"

The other option is to use "Better Performance" aka "Delayed Write"