Solved How to take an external (USB) hard drive back offline in Windows 7?

[marciag]

How can I tell Windows 7 Pro (64 bit) to close my external hard drive and take it offline? The only way I know is to shut down, which is pretty inconvenient. This was east to do in XP, and ensures that the end of file marker is written, so that there was no garbaging of files by re-use of currently allocated space.

Thanks!

 

[derekimo]

Welcome to the forum,

I just use the safely remove hardware method,

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/10169-safely-remove-hardware-eject-device.html

 

[marciag]

thanks

The extended email reply I got pointed me to an earlier thread, which said where access to the "safely remove" feature is located in Windows 7. Works perfectly once one knows to go to "Open Devices and Printers", to right click on the device.