Problem 'ejecting' external USB drive on Win2K

I'm starting to feel like an idiot for not being able to get Win2K to
'eject' an external USB drive that I got as a Christmas present for my
wife and daughter. Each time I request that it be 'ejected' (to make it
safe to remove it, presumably by flushing Win2K's internal file cache to
it) it says "OK - safe now" and then a few seconds later restores the
drive to accessibility and barks out stern warnings if I then switch off
the drive (yes, if I hit the drive switch during those few seconds, no
warning appears - but it's the sort of thing that makes one nervous).

I can kind of understand what might be happening: since the system has
to recognize the disk when its USB cable is inserted (or when it's
powered up), there's some kind of polling going on, and after the drive
has been 'ejected' the next time the polling interval expires the system
rediscovers it. Still, one might expect something a tad more elegant -
e.g., a slightly longer polling interval after an explicit ejection
request, or the ability to recognize a *transition* in USB state (in
this case, from "deactivated per request but still there" to "newly
plugged in").

Is this just how USB works on Windows? I dimly remember encountering
something similar when I used an external USB enclosure on Win98SE, and
may just have shrugged it off ('ejected' the drive and then ignored the
subsequent warning when I powered it down after it had reappeared).

Win2K Help wasn't helpful at all (describing device manager menu options
that didn't exist). DM indicates that drive write-back cache is
disabled (as well it should be, though I'd still expect some mechanism
to enable it for special uses), but does not specify that the drive is
removable (while some USB 'key' drives that my wife has appear to be
listed as such - and I recall being able to control this on Win98SE).

I can't believe that 15 minutes' worth of Googling on this didn't turn
up *any* useful information - so thanks for any insights that might be
forthcoming.

- bill

Bill Todd wrote:
I'm starting to feel like an idiot for not being able to get Win2K to
'eject' an external USB drive that I got as a Christmas present for my
wife and daughter. Each time I request that it be 'ejected' (to make it
safe to remove it, presumably by flushing Win2K's internal file cache to
it) it says "OK - safe now" and then a few seconds later restores the
drive to accessibility and barks out stern warnings if I then switch off
the drive (yes, if I hit the drive switch during those few seconds, no
warning appears - but it's the sort of thing that makes one nervous).

I can kind of understand what might be happening: since the system has
to recognize the disk when its USB cable is inserted (or when it's
powered up), there's some kind of polling going on, and after the drive
has been 'ejected' the next time the polling interval expires the system
rediscovers it. Still, one might expect something a tad more elegant -
e.g., a slightly longer polling interval after an explicit ejection
request, or the ability to recognize a *transition* in USB state (in
this case, from "deactivated per request but still there" to "newly
plugged in").

Is this just how USB works on Windows? I dimly remember encountering
something similar when I used an external USB enclosure on Win98SE, and
may just have shrugged it off ('ejected' the drive and then ignored the
subsequent warning when I powered it down after it had reappeared).

Win2K Help wasn't helpful at all (describing device manager menu options
that didn't exist). DM indicates that drive write-back cache is
disabled (as well it should be, though I'd still expect some mechanism
to enable it for special uses), but does not specify that the drive is
removable (while some USB 'key' drives that my wife has appear to be
listed as such - and I recall being able to control this on Win98SE).

I can't believe that 15 minutes' worth of Googling on this didn't turn
up *any* useful information - so thanks for any insights that might be
forthcoming.


Win2K was a bit weird with USB storage devices, and "Eject" never did
seem to do much for me. Try using the removable media icon in the task
tray instead (looks like a flash card with an arrow over it), and use
the stop or remove function.

w2k alone never causes this. Maybe your drive controller chip (USB-IDE) is
broken.

I can kind of understand what might be happening: since the system has
to recognize the disk when its USB cable is inserted (or when it's
powered up), there's some kind of polling going on

No. USB spec does not require any polling for this, everything is done based on
electrical changes on the connector.

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation

http://www.storagecraft.com