Can't safely remove esata HDD

[avada]

Hi!

This one always annoys the hell out of me sometimes windows just refuses to let me remove the esata HDD. Usually I have explorer.exe locking it. I use the Unlocker program the free it up. But even then I can't remove it. Unlocker shows nothing. Now for the umpteenth time googled the issue. And found the Handle program from sysinternals. I could view the handles on the drive but couldn't close them because I got an error that the handle is invalid. What can I do?

Currently these are the handles:

System             pid: 4      type: File          18EC: L:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxfLogContainer00000000000000000002
System             pid: 4      type: File          1A64: L:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$Txf
System             pid: 4      type: File          1F80: L:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxfLogContainer00000000000000000001
System             pid: 4      type: File          1FF8: L:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxfLog.blf

The System process is locking the drive...

[allen2]

Most likely, you aren't using the driver for the esata port: i had this problem with xp some driver when installed had "safely remove drive for all drive internal or not" and other didn't had it even for the external one.

And if you're already using the right driver then you might try to stop services to identify which one is locking your drive. See there for examples.

Edited April 7, 2011 by allen2

[avada]

Most likely, you aren't using the driver for the esata port: i had this problem with xp some driver when installed had "safely remove drive for all drive internal or not" and other didn't had it even for the external one.

And if you're already using the right driver then you might try to stop services to identify which one is locking your drive. See there for examples.

I'm quite sure I'm using the proper drivers, because I usually can remove the hard rive. But sometimes windows just wouldn't let me. Also it seems it never lets me when I have the HDD connected before I start the computer.

Unfortunately only the darn system processes have handles on the drive so there is no service to be identified.

[allen2]

The system process is used by many others: for example when you access from the network to a file using a share, the handle on the file is owned by the system process but in fact it is the server service which allow it if you stop the server service the handle would disappear on this file.

So you should really try stopping superfecth, indexing etc ... service on by one to find the right one.