PLEASE HELP-External hard drive problem

I have recently purchased an external hard drive: 250GB- USB2.0 Interface
and I am using a notebook Window XP.
Last night, after saving large files music onto it I tried to eject the
device by clicking on the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in the system tray
and clicked on stop and it said "Device 'generic volume' cannot be stopped
right now. Try stopping the device again later". This message kept coming up
and eventually I had to eject the driver. I have not lost any of the content
but I still get the same message even after having changed the properties
for ejecting (fast way).

Please note that the check carried out while trying to exit was positive.
I am not very experienced on these matters, drive is cheap and I believe an
old version, can you please help?

Many thanks in advance.

"Teti Garf" wrote in message
...
I have recently purchased an external hard drive: 250GB- USB2.0 Interface
and I am using a notebook Window XP.
Last night, after saving large files music onto it I tried to eject the
device by clicking on the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in the system tray
and clicked on stop and it said "Device 'generic volume' cannot be stopped
right now. Try stopping the device again later". This message kept coming
up and eventually I had to eject the driver. I have not lost any of the
content but I still get the same message even after having changed the
properties for ejecting (fast way).

Please note that the check carried out while trying to exit was positive.
I am not very experienced on these matters, drive is cheap and I believe
an old version, can you please help?

Many thanks in advance.

Probably something on your machine was still accessing the drive.
But Always try to Safely remove if you can.

-Is your notebook USB2.0 compatible? (just to make sure)

-Did the hard drive come with drivers?

windows xp has a number of generic drivers for many different devices.
if your external HD came with drivers, you should install them to be
sure it will work correctly with your notebook.

-what file system is the external hard drive formatted with (NTFS,
FAT)?

it seems like a program or windows itself is reading the external HD
and not allowing it to eject because it is in use. if the HD is
formatted with NTFS, there is something called Indexing that windows
uses to index and find files on the drive quickly (which may be why it
will not let you eject). to check:
1. Connect the HD to the notebook, open My Computer, right click the
external HD, and click 'Properties'.
2. under the General tab, you should see the file system the HD
currently has. if it is NTFS, then proceed to 3.
3. click through the tabs until you find a box labeled 'Allow Indexing
Service to index this disk for fast file searching'. uncheck this box.
4. select 'Apply changes to all subfolders and files'. click ok.
5. if any errors (files cannot be updated) come up click ignore.

-try closing any programs which could possibly be reading or accessing
the drive before ejecting.

-make sure windows is up to date. you can use Windows/Microsoft update.