We have a 1TB USB WesternDigital MyPassport External HDD plugged into our Windows 2008 R2 (64-bit) server (HP ProLiant ML110 G7) and when you go to eject the External HDD (to swap drives for backups), right-click and hit Eject MyPassport, it'll sit there for over a minute or two before it tells you its safe to unplug the device. It shouldn't be currently writing when we eject it, as all it does it Windows Server Backups on the hour and we're definitely not ejecting it while a backup is running.
Any idea what could be causing such long eject times?
Did you just write data the the external drive? (E.g. did you just write the backup to it?)
If you did then windows likely has not finished actually writing the data and that it has remaining unflushed data cached in RAM.
Check to make sure delayed write is turned off.
Go to Disk Management. Right click on the disk itself (not the partition) and select Properties. Under Policies, you want it to be set to "Quick Removal".
Delete all shadow copies off of the external hard drive and it will rapidly eject. For some, not an acceptable solution and one that has to be repeated. It is really just more detail about the problem and its root cause. Now we need someone to explain why the shadow copies slow the eject process.