Safely Remove Hardware

After re-installing my computer from scratch, I noticed a greenish icon in my system tray with the title "Safely Remove Hardware" and when I opened that icon, I saw all my harddisks :

1. Internal harddisk #1
2. Internal harddisk #2
3. External harddisk #3

All my harddisks are fine and working properly according Windows, PerfectDisk, chkdsk and my test tool.
You don't have to explain me how to get rid of this icon, because I already know that.

I just don't understand why Windows is doing this to me. What is the real reason behind this icon ?
Thanks in advance.

 

I only see that icon when I have a usb thumb drive plugged in.

I click on it then select to stop the usb and a dialogue comes up "It's now safe to remove device" or something similar.

Don't really know if it's necessary but I do it just in case.Have forgotten to do it on occassion but it didn't seem to have any ill effects.

 

I also get this gray popup screen, when I restore an image with ShadowProtect, not always, but regularly :

I don't really care about that, but I don't understand it either, because nothing changed in my hardware, my computer is working fine and clean, even all Events Logs are clean.

 

Do you have SATA hard drives? SATA is plug 'n' play I think so that why they show up.

For external disks, the icon is to help you safely turn it off. If the drive is in use for example, it will tell you that it cant be turned off at the time.

 

Yes I have SATA hard drives, but I don't use RAID. Windows calls them "Generic volumes" in that icon. Is that the reason ? I don't have to use RAID. Right ?

 

That is an acceptable reasonable explanation, I can understand. Thanks.

 

Eric I think that they may be the virtual hard drives that Shadow Defender creates to store any changes on each partition.

When I trialled SD and restored from a ghost image prior to SD's install I got sort of the same thing.

If you show hidden folders they are named Diskto.sys or something similar.

 

For your external HD to speed up uninstall you may want [from My Computer] to select:
-> "HD name"
-> Properties
-> Hardware
-> again "HD name"
-> Criteria
-> Optimize for fast unistall

if I have some understanding of how you work through reading your excellent posts, ErikAlbert, you'll probably test the speed of the HD data transcription with either option selected.

It might be interesting to know the results.

 

I dont use RAID either and my SATA disk shows up in the Safely Remove Hardware box too.

 

OK. I will look into this, when I do my next daily backup. Thanks.

 

Hello,
Same here, Erik.
On one machine, the first time I installed it, I didn't have them.
Once I reinstalled, the safely remove crap showed up. Go figure. Why? I really don't know. Maybe some weird hardware change? The only difference is the partitions didn't exist the first time and they did the second.
Mrk

 

Well I don't consider having other partitions as a hardware change.
My computer tower has no changes since I bought it and I have only ONE computer. All my images are made with ShadowProtect on the same computer.
I only bought an external harddisk and a printer later.
I don't understand any of this either, it's not logical and very confusing.
According that icon I have to remove my two internal harddisks, which are working fine since March 2006. That icon doesn't make sense at all, except for the external harddisk. Pffft.

Recently I got a warning in my Event Viewer, I look it up and Microsoft tells me as resolution : "You don't have to do anything."
First they scare me and then they tell me it's nothing. I have better things to do.

 

Write caching to disk on/off is located in device manager.
Right click each drive & it's located under properties.

My experience has been that turning it off really slows down
any operation that requires extensive write operations.

It think you get the Safely Remove icon if you have any USB
device, like a card reader, permanently connected.

 

Then you are in the same boat like me and it's a comfort to know, I'm not the only one.
It's not really a problem, but it's confusing for harddisks inside the tower.

 

try using safe remove to stop your OS partition
it will say its busy atm and to try again later.
but the other drives will safe remove fine as long as arent in use and havent got a paging file on them.
lodore

 

I had my portion of write errors by manually disconnecting USB drives,so i always use now the safely remove icon.

 

I get that same message all the time when i switch hard drives then plug in my assortment of USB Pens. I take it for granted that Windows is simply registering that particular hardware into it's internal database like a MRU or something, because i always clean my drives of temp clutter and useless logs, those being logs Windows writes to but never shows us.

My USB Pens still show up and work OK anyway regardless of Windows suggestion to reboot and all that hoopla.

Same thing happens after changing CD/DVD Drives. It's a Windows hardware recognition thing.

I do know theres a simple setting someplace to prevent that message of "Now It's Safe To Remove" whenever using plug-ins, but ATM i forget just where in this mechanical telephone book exactly where.

 

Thanks everybody. I know now that :

- the green SRH-icon is harmless, even for internal harddisks
- the grey popup menu is also harmless and happens only when I restore other images than my normal images.
- I'm not alone with this psychotic behavior of Windows.

I can't express my real feelings, because this is a family forum, but I can live with it, now I know what it is.
Case closed.

 

Properly configured, the "Safely Remove Hardware" will always be in the system tray. It is important. In '98 and "ME" it was essential, but XP attempts to unravel the damage of suddenly pulling hardware improperly. The little "bloop" sound you hear when you unplug is actually a warning or error sound. If you use the icon in the system tray to properly remove the hardware, you won't get that sound.

When you use the icon to prepare for the removal, it closes files and completes any pending activities with which the hardware is involved.

If your icon isn't in your system tray, somethings wrong.

 

I found it again.

Here is the link with screenshots to better help find these otherwise "hidden" obscure items of USB concern.

http://forums.dvdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=35005

 

I never had that problem. I turn ON/OFF my external harddisk, whenever I want. Of course I won't turn it OFF, when it is working, that is logical.

 

Flush data to disk