Questions[safe-remove](server)

Every week I will copy the backups to external USB hard disk connecting it to windows server 2008 R2. Most of the time I will face the below message while trying to unmount/eject the external hard disk. Acknowledging the prompt I check if any window of HD is open and close if any but it always prompts the same while trying to remove safely.

This device is currently in use. Close any programs or windows that might be using the device and then try again.

Anybody has any fix for this other than restarting the server for removing the device safely?

I have an external USB harddisk that I have scripted to safely shut down after a backup, so the backup operator can unplug it, and knows not to if the lights are still on for some reason.

It's always worked fine using the DevEject command-line utility. This week it failed for some reason:

DevEject 1.0  2003 c't/Matthias Withopf

Ejecting  'USB Mass Storage Device' [USB\VID_0411&PID_002A\00000704C8D2]...FAILED (23,5)
Error ejecting device USB Mass Storage Device, vetoed (15,5)!

Worse yet, using the SRH tray icon, I click Stop, click OK, it pauses about 5 seconds with OK and Cancel greyed out, closes the sub-window, and then the main window with the Stop button still shows the device, and Stop is still available. I can keep doing that and it never gets rid of the device. I can still access it in Explorer.

LockHunter reports that nothing is locking the drive.

I've made no changes to the backup configuration or anything to do with the drive this week. Why the sudden flake-out? Short of a restart, which I can't do today before the backup operator goes home, how do I fix it?

I mounted a VHD file in Windows 7 using the Disk Manager. Once mounted, there is no option to Unmount it. The only thing close to such an option that I can find is if I click the icon in the taskbar notification area that I use to remove USB devices... there's an option to eject the virtual hard disk. However, when I click that, it says that it's in use and cannot be ejected. Even though... it's not in use, I never even browsed the drive. The disk manager is closed... and the only open files handles to the drive (according to disk performance in task manager) is SYSTEM. Ejecting devices cleanly has been a problem since Windows XP, and it sickens me to see it persist into windows 7.

We have HP laptops with a Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet card. For some reason, it is possible to 'safely remove' the network card from Windows. Obviously this disconnects the machine from the network.

Even worse, removing the network cable from the laptop (e.g. to move it to another room) automatically 'safely removes' the NIC. The machine cannot be reconnected to the network until Windows is rebooted!

I haven't been able to find any settings on the network adapter in Device Manager that changes this behaviour.

Does anyone know how to stop Windows from listing this device as hardware that can be removed?

I was reading that question How do you know who or what is locking a remote file? and I remember that question... even in Windows7, the Windows doesn't show that program is locking the removable disk, so we cannot safely remove the hardware. There is some tool to solve this?