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Topic: "Safely Remove Hardware" |
Jim Eller
From:
Kodak, TN (Michigan transplant)
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Posted 10 Jun 2008 4:50 am |
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When I retrieve pictures or files from my SD Card I use the "Safely Remove Hardware" button before I take the card out of the computer.
The problem...when I reinsert it or any other card in the slots the computer will not recognize them. I have to reboot the machine every time to get it to see the card.
I've tried the "find new hardware" on control panel but that doesn't work either and is as time consuming as rebooting.
Is this normal or am I missing something here?
Thanks,
Jim |
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Bent Romnes
From:
London,Ontario, Canada
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Posted 10 Jun 2008 5:13 am
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Hi Jim,
Are you running XP or Vista?
You shouldn't have to do the "safely remove hardware" with your SD camera card.
I am speaking about windows XP here.
Although I don't have card slots, I do have USB ports and I use a memory stick in those ports. All I do is insert the stick, XP auto-detects and away I go. When done, I pull the stick out and XP sees that I did it.
I do have card slots in my printer and those work automatically also, with no detection needs.
Next time, just try and pull the card out without 'remove hardware'. It should work. |
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Jim Eller
From:
Kodak, TN (Michigan transplant)
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Posted 10 Jun 2008 5:22 am
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Bent,
XP here.
I had read somewhere not to just pull them out of the slots. I have done that before without thinking and didn't see any unfavorable results, but.......
Jim |
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Jack Stoner
From:
Kansas City, MO
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Posted 10 Jun 2008 6:32 am
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In many cases just removing the USB connected device won't cause problems. The only device I've had problems with is a SanDisk 4GB micro cruzer "key".
There were problems early on with USB in XP, but SP2 seems to have fixed most of the USB issues. Do you have Windows XP, SP2? (you should if you don't). |
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Bo Borland
From:
South Jersey -
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Posted 10 Jun 2008 9:43 am
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Jim, here's the deal about what you are missing. [Assuming you have a multi card reader group of slots installed in your PC.]
When you use the "safely remove hardware" button in this instance you are actually removing the entire group of card slots ( since they are all connected together). That's why you need to reboot to use them again.
Instead, go to start, my computer, then hightlight the drive being used for your card.
To the left, the menu will offer the option to eject this disc. Eject the disc and remove it from the slot.. the multi card reader will still be installed and available for use.
Hope that helps.. |
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Wiz Feinberg
From:
Mid-Michigan, USA
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Posted 10 Jun 2008 9:56 am
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I used to think it was ok to simply unplug or turn off an external drive, but have now come to change my thinking on this matter.
On Monday my computer became unbootable due to an experiment gone bad (attempted conversion to RAID). During the course of the next 13 hours I tried many things to get a saved Acronis image onto a single SATA hard drive and boot from it. It was then that I learned that not using the "Safely Remove Hardware" utility can cause serious problems with that device.
I have been saving images to both IDE internal and USB external hard drives, with the most recent incrementals going to the external disk. When I lost my boot-ability I inserted my Acronis True Image Recovery CD and looked for the image on the USB disk. Huh? No USB disk appeared in the list and it took a real long time to see any drives at all! But, the SATA drives were now marked as Dynamic RAID disks, even though I had deleted the array and disabled RAID in the BIOS. Despite numerous attempts to restore images and bootsectors, neither disk was seen during bootup. But that isn't what I want to talk about now.
When the Recovery CD failed to help me I decided to boot from my Ubuntu Hardy Heron CD and try to move the last full image from the external drive to the internal one. When I opened Computer, then tried to mount those two drives, guess what? Nada. The drives couldn't be mounted because they ware marked as "in use by Windows!" The details explained that a common cause of this is failure to properly eject hardware that was in use during the last session. That is exactly what I had done.
Now that I have finally recovered my system I will always use the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the Systray.
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog |
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Jim Eller
From:
Kodak, TN (Michigan transplant)
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Posted 10 Jun 2008 10:59 am
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Jack - I have XP w/ SP2 and SP3
Bo - When I "go to start, my computer, then highlight the drive being used for your card.
To the left, the menu will offer the option to eject this disc. Eject the disc." The light remains on. Does that mean it's still connected? When I go to "Explore" and click on the drive (E in this case) it tells me to insert disc. Maybe this is the answer to my problem??
Sorry for all the dumb question.
Jim |
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Wiz Feinberg
From:
Mid-Michigan, USA
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Posted 11 Jun 2008 6:22 am
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I have posted a rather long technical article on my blog about the consequences I suffered by not properly stopping my USB drive before turning it off. It may be of benefit to people who use Acronis True Image for image backups to an external disk.
BTW: "Ejecting" (right-click > Eject) a device does indeed Stop it, the same as the Safely Remove Hardware Wizard does, in Windows 2000 and newer. I personally will use the wizard to stop and remove my plug in devices from now on.
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog |
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Jim Eller
From:
Kodak, TN (Michigan transplant)
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Posted 11 Jun 2008 7:30 am
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Once again Wiz, Thanks!
I like that, right-click>eject thing. I don't have to reboot if I want to access it again that way.
Jim |
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