[Doppler]

I have a maxtor 250 GB hard drive. It is formatted as a FAT32. I've left it turned on for a few days, and when I try to eject the hard drive through XP's safety remove hardware it states; "the device cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later." The HDD has been turned on and not been used for a couple of days now, and I'm still getting the same message.

I've shut down everything I can think of which would be using the HDD, however nothing seems to work.

Is there anyting I can do to find out which programs or software are accessing the HDD so I can finally eject it?

I need to move it to a new computer and i'm afraid that if I simply remove the maxtor HDD manually, it may damage the drive and I will lose the data.

what are my options?

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Hello and welcome to Geeks to Go

A simple solution to this would be to turn your computer off, then it won't be accessing the external hard drive.

If your external hard drive has a power button, turn it off after you turn the computer off, then you can unplug it.

[computerwiz12890]

Hello and welcome to Geeks to Go

A simple solution to this would be to turn your computer off, then it won't be accessing the external hard drive.

If your external hard drive has a power button, turn it off after you turn the computer off, then you can unplug it.

[dsenette]

be sure to follow the standard shutdown procedure

[Doppler]

Thanks for the advice. I was able to turn the HDD off without a problem.

thanks again,

cheers