Safely remove hardware problem

[rokerman]

I have an external hard drive. When I have finished using it, I close down every program using it.
Then when I try and remoce it, i get a message saying it is still being used.
I dont understand as everything is closed down
Any ideas?

 

[ryo]

check into task manager and see the program process there..you can end task at there. and try to remove again.

 

[seekermeister]

How long before it lets you remove the drive without that warning? If only a few moments, try disabling write caching on the drive in the Device Manager. If longer, check in the BIOS to see if it is set for ACHI.

 

[NoN]

I have an external hard drive. When I have finished using it, I close down every program using it.
Then when I try and remoce it, i get a message saying it is still being used.
I dont understand as everything is closed down
Any ideas?

Have you installed an automatic backup sort of thing? So, it is normal...But also, sometimes Windows will write restore point in the background or if plenty of heavy files and not so fast write disk cache...maybe you have tried to remove it too quickly. And when you tried the second time it should remove, that's mean it got times to save all data it needs.