FreeAgent Products

[fisherg]

Hi,
Sorry for not posting my solution.
The solution is very simple. The process that locks the drive is Explorer.exe. This is because of the recycle bin.
The recycle bin needs to be disabled for external hard drives, that you want to be able to disconnect easily. since I've disabled the the recycle bin on the external hard drive, this problem has never happened again.

in order to disable the recycle bin on the external hard drive do the following:

• Right click the recycle bin on the desktop
• Select Properties
• Global Tab
• Select "Configure drives independenty" (instead of "Use one setting for all drives" ).
• Select the USB drive letter tab on the top
• Put a check in the "Do not move files to the Recycle Bin" checkbox.
• Click OK.

i have worked with my hard drive a great deal since this change and the problem of not being able to eject it has never happened again since !

Thank you all for your help and support.
Microsoft needs to find some solution for this issue.

Guy.


Message Edited by fisherg on 01-15-2008 02:38 PM

[zemdia]

    I had the same exact problem - what worked for me:
-I tried what the guy before me wrote (right clicking Recycle Bin --> Prop's --> configure drive independently --> set FreeAgent Drive tab to 'do not move')
(still couldn't safely remove at this point)
-closed IE & windows explorer & everything else
(still couldn't safely remove at this point)
-opened windows explorer back up
-highlighted c drive on windows explorer
-closed windows explorer again (read on another site that explorer needs to be closed while a different drive is highlighted)
-successfully 'safely removed hardware'

[TechCurmudgeon]

For many years I've been looking for a good way to find out what was locking a drive or other device, and would cause 'Safely Remove Hardware's utterly useless 'generic volume cannot be stopped ..." message.

Finally found one that does a good job, and is relatively straightforward to use. It is a Donationware program called Unlocker, and is available from http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

Give it a try. It also has the option to kill the locking process(s), so it does require a bit of savvy lest you do something bad like kill a process that actually *is* writing to the drive.

I've been using it for only a few days (coinciding, curiously enough, shortly after installing my FreeAgent drive), and one thing I've learned is, under certain circumstances (and I haven't figured out exactly why yet) that Musicmatch Jukebox Plus likes to attach itself to the drive even though I didn't play any music files from it, and even though I've closed Jukebox. I wouold suspect other programs do the same kind of thing ....

It would be nice if Seagate added similar functionality to DriveManager.

[zemdia1]

I had to reformat my computer and start again and got the same error message concerning the "the device 'generic volume' cannot be stopped".  With a slight tweak, I was able to get safely eject the drive as follows:

In order to disable the recycle bin on the external hard drive do the following:

• Right click the recycle bin on the desktop
• Select Properties
• Global Tab
• Select "Configure drives independenty" (instead of "Use one setting for all drives" ).
• Select the USB drive letter tab on the top
• Put a check in the "Do not move files to the Recycle Bin" checkbox.
• Click OK

Then,

• (still couldn't safely remove at this point)
• -closed IE & windows explorer & everything else
• (still couldn't safely remove at this point)
• -opened windows explorer back up
• -highlighted freeagent drive on windows explorer
• -then, highlighted c drive on windows explorer (ie, I had to toggle back and forth between selecting the freeagent drive and the c drive)
• -closed windows explorer again (read on another site that explorer needs to be closed while a different drive is highlighted)
• -successfully 'safely removed hardware'

note bene: I did not need to install special software to safely remove my freeagent

[dizzylizzy1456]

My mother just recently bought a seagate, and I have a WD MyBook. We have both seen this problem. With my hard drive, I do have it set up for quick removal. And with the design of the mybook, all I do is push a button and remove the usb. Seeing that you have already set up your hard drive for quick removal, then you should be able to do the same, if not, a similar action to remove your hard drive.

[AlanM]

Many thanks, dizzlizzy.
That tactic is also in our KB article on this topic (Step 5).


Message Edited by AlanM on 06-27-2008 07:22 AM

[pdagenius]

Just bought a FreeAgent 250GB drive and had the same problem ejecting the drive as everyone else.  I am running WinXP Pro incase that is significant?

Someone mentioned in the forum about Protected Norton recyle bin which reminded me that I had this installed. I have now uninstalled the program and rebooted and the eject problem has gone away.

Incidentally my recyle bin is set to a global setting without the check mark "Do not move files to the recyle bin".

Maybe it's not a one solution problem?  Anyway I'm happy for the moment

[cenwag]

Yes, it's not only the Recycle Bin etc. that causes this problem, in my case it was Graphic Workshop of all things! However a previous post mentioned Unlocker - this does the trick! Can be currently downloaded from:  

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Miscellaneous/Unlocker.shtml

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TechCurmudgeon wrote:
For many years I've been looking for a good way to find out what was locking a drive or other device, and would cause 'Safely Remove Hardware's utterly useless 'generic volume cannot be stopped ..." message.

Finally found one that does a good job, and is relatively straightforward to use. It is a Donationware program called Unlocker, and is available from http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

Give it a try. It also has the option to kill the locking process(s), so it does require a bit of savvy lest you do something bad like kill a process that actually *is* writing to the drive.

I've been using it for only a few days (coinciding, curiously enough, shortly after installing my FreeAgent drive), and one thing I've learned is, under certain circumstances (and I haven't figured out exactly why yet) that Musicmatch Jukebox Plus likes to attach itself to the drive even though I didn't play any music files from it, and even though I've closed Jukebox. I wouold suspect other programs do the same kind of thing ....

It would be nice if Seagate added similar functionality to DriveManager.

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