8 TB WD external drive chuntering away for hours.

[Mike Halmarack]

I try to stand it down, using a "USB Safely Remove" utility but in the
case of this particular drive, I get the message: "Cannot be stopped
for now, close all applications that have open files on the disk...l"

Then I'm given a long lists of 'System' and 'svchost' files that need
to be closed before the disk can be stopped.

I have several other smaller external drives which seem to only be
active when I'm uploading or downloading files to them, which seems
like a preferable option to me.
Any suggestions on this?

[Pancho]

Post by Mike Halmarack
I try to stand it down, using a "USB Safely Remove" utility but in the
case of this particular drive, I get the message: "Cannot be stopped
for now, close all applications that have open files on the disk...l"
Then I'm given a long lists of 'System' and 'svchost' files that need
to be closed before the disk can be stopped.
I have several other smaller external drives which seem to only be
active when I'm uploading or downloading files to them, which seems
like a preferable option to me.
Any suggestions on this?

For a sensible answer I think you would need to list what the files
were. In MS window you can see this with Sysinternals ProcessExplorer or
maybe FileMon. Sorry, I can't remember exactly which tool in the
Sysinternals suite of programs.

In general, I have not found it difficult to shutdown USB attached HDD,
but I have not been able to stop them from repeatedly spontaneously
spinning up whilst attached. My use case was I wanted them permanently
attached, but only waking up for daily/weekly backups and or very
occasional on demand retrieval of archive files. I didn't figure it out,
now I'm waiting for a spare WakeOnLan capable PC to become available.
I'll turn the whole PC off when not using the disks. I expect this is a
common use case, now we have cheap SSD storage, HDD are only used for
backups.

[Mike Halmarack]

Post by Pancho

Post by Mike Halmarack
I try to stand it down, using a "USB Safely Remove" utility but in the
case of this particular drive, I get the message: "Cannot be stopped
for now, close all applications that have open files on the disk...l"
Then I'm given a long lists of 'System' and 'svchost' files that need
to be closed before the disk can be stopped.
I have several other smaller external drives which seem to only be
active when I'm uploading or downloading files to them, which seems
like a preferable option to me.
Any suggestions on this?

For a sensible answer I think you would need to list what the files
were. In MS window you can see this with Sysinternals ProcessExplorer or
maybe FileMon. Sorry, I can't remember exactly which tool in the
Sysinternals suite of programs.
In general, I have not found it difficult to shutdown USB attached HDD,
but I have not been able to stop them from repeatedly spontaneously
spinning up whilst attached. My use case was I wanted them permanently
attached, but only waking up for daily/weekly backups and or very
occasional on demand retrieval of archive files. I didn't figure it out,
now I'm waiting for a spare WakeOnLan capable PC to become available.
I'll turn the whole PC off when not using the disks. I expect this is a
common use case, now we have cheap SSD storage, HDD are only used for
backups.

There are very long lists of System and svchost.exe files said to be
stopping me from removing this drive. I can and have used the force
option but I'm not sure how much potential damage might be caused by
that. Do the type of system files I mentioned directly affect my
personal workfiles as they move to and from the drive?

[David]

Post by Mike Halmarack

Post by Pancho

Post by Mike Halmarack
I try to stand it down, using a "USB Safely Remove" utility but in the
case of this particular drive, I get the message: "Cannot be stopped
for now, close all applications that have open files on the disk...l"
Then I'm given a long lists of 'System' and 'svchost' files that need
to be closed before the disk can be stopped.
I have several other smaller external drives which seem to only be
active when I'm uploading or downloading files to them, which seems
like a preferable option to me.
Any suggestions on this?

For a sensible answer I think you would need to list what the files
were. In MS window you can see this with Sysinternals ProcessExplorer or
maybe FileMon. Sorry, I can't remember exactly which tool in the
Sysinternals suite of programs.
In general, I have not found it difficult to shutdown USB attached HDD,
but I have not been able to stop them from repeatedly spontaneously
spinning up whilst attached. My use case was I wanted them permanently
attached, but only waking up for daily/weekly backups and or very
occasional on demand retrieval of archive files. I didn't figure it out,
now I'm waiting for a spare WakeOnLan capable PC to become available.
I'll turn the whole PC off when not using the disks. I expect this is a
common use case, now we have cheap SSD storage, HDD are only used for
backups.

There are very long lists of System and svchost.exe files said to be
stopping me from removing this drive. I can and have used the force
option but I'm not sure how much potential damage might be caused by
that. Do the type of system files I mentioned directly affect my
personal workfiles as they move to and from the drive?

Vague memories that you can stop Windows from caching writes (which it
does to improve performance) so that you can eject an external drive
immediately with minimal risk.

You don't have system files (such as SWAP) on there accidentally?

Cheers



Dave R

[Mike Halmarack]

Post by David

Post by Mike Halmarack

Post by Pancho

Post by Mike Halmarack
I try to stand it down, using a "USB Safely Remove" utility but in the
case of this particular drive, I get the message: "Cannot be stopped
for now, close all applications that have open files on the disk...l"
Then I'm given a long lists of 'System' and 'svchost' files that need
to be closed before the disk can be stopped.
I have several other smaller external drives which seem to only be
active when I'm uploading or downloading files to them, which seems
like a preferable option to me.
Any suggestions on this?

For a sensible answer I think you would need to list what the files
were. In MS window you can see this with Sysinternals ProcessExplorer or
maybe FileMon. Sorry, I can't remember exactly which tool in the
Sysinternals suite of programs.
In general, I have not found it difficult to shutdown USB attached HDD,
but I have not been able to stop them from repeatedly spontaneously
spinning up whilst attached. My use case was I wanted them permanently
attached, but only waking up for daily/weekly backups and or very
occasional on demand retrieval of archive files. I didn't figure it out,
now I'm waiting for a spare WakeOnLan capable PC to become available.
I'll turn the whole PC off when not using the disks. I expect this is a
common use case, now we have cheap SSD storage, HDD are only used for
backups.

There are very long lists of System and svchost.exe files said to be
stopping me from removing this drive. I can and have used the force
option but I'm not sure how much potential damage might be caused by
that. Do the type of system files I mentioned directly affect my
personal workfiles as they move to and from the drive?

Vague memories that you can stop Windows from caching writes (which it
does to improve performance) so that you can eject an external drive
immediately with minimal risk.

Thanks, I'll look into doing that.

Post by David
You don't have system files (such as SWAP) on there accidentally?

It could be. Will that be show stopper as far as stopping Windows from
caching writes?

Post by David
Cheers
Dave R
--
AMD FX-6300 in GA-990X-Gaming SLI-CF running Windows 10 x64

[Pancho]

Post by Mike Halmarack

Post by Pancho

Post by Mike Halmarack
I try to stand it down, using a "USB Safely Remove" utility but in the
case of this particular drive, I get the message: "Cannot be stopped
for now, close all applications that have open files on the disk...l"
Then I'm given a long lists of 'System' and 'svchost' files that need
to be closed before the disk can be stopped.
I have several other smaller external drives which seem to only be
active when I'm uploading or downloading files to them, which seems
like a preferable option to me.
Any suggestions on this?

For a sensible answer I think you would need to list what the files
were. In MS window you can see this with Sysinternals ProcessExplorer or
maybe FileMon. Sorry, I can't remember exactly which tool in the
Sysinternals suite of programs.
In general, I have not found it difficult to shutdown USB attached HDD,
but I have not been able to stop them from repeatedly spontaneously
spinning up whilst attached. My use case was I wanted them permanently
attached, but only waking up for daily/weekly backups and or very
occasional on demand retrieval of archive files. I didn't figure it out,
now I'm waiting for a spare WakeOnLan capable PC to become available.
I'll turn the whole PC off when not using the disks. I expect this is a
common use case, now we have cheap SSD storage, HDD are only used for
backups.

There are very long lists of System and svchost.exe files said to be
stopping me from removing this drive. I can and have used the force
option but I'm not sure how much potential damage might be caused by
that. Do the type of system files I mentioned directly affect my
personal workfiles as they move to and from the drive?

svchost.exe is normally C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe it is not a file
I would expect to see on a USB HDD, unless I was booting from it.

However, I guess svchost.exe is a process name, and that this process
has open files on the USB hdd. The svhost.exe is used to run windows
services. In your set up a windows service might be configured to look
at files on the USB HDD. To get any clue of what is going on you need to
know the names of these actual files on the USB HDD. The problem is that
there will be many svchost processes and it won't be obvious which one
is causing the problem.

If you don't have sysinternals (I think it was actually pocmon.exe noy
filemon), MS windows Resource Monitor allows you to look at disk
activity, files being used. I'm not sure if it covers locked files. I
remember finding blocking files/process way more difficult than it
should be.

[Mike Halmarack]

Post by Pancho

Post by Mike Halmarack

Post by Pancho

Post by Mike Halmarack
I try to stand it down, using a "USB Safely Remove" utility but in the
case of this particular drive, I get the message: "Cannot be stopped
for now, close all applications that have open files on the disk...l"
Then I'm given a long lists of 'System' and 'svchost' files that need
to be closed before the disk can be stopped.
I have several other smaller external drives which seem to only be
active when I'm uploading or downloading files to them, which seems
like a preferable option to me.
Any suggestions on this?

For a sensible answer I think you would need to list what the files
were. In MS window you can see this with Sysinternals ProcessExplorer or
maybe FileMon. Sorry, I can't remember exactly which tool in the
Sysinternals suite of programs.
In general, I have not found it difficult to shutdown USB attached HDD,
but I have not been able to stop them from repeatedly spontaneously
spinning up whilst attached. My use case was I wanted them permanently
attached, but only waking up for daily/weekly backups and or very
occasional on demand retrieval of archive files. I didn't figure it out,
now I'm waiting for a spare WakeOnLan capable PC to become available.
I'll turn the whole PC off when not using the disks. I expect this is a
common use case, now we have cheap SSD storage, HDD are only used for
backups.

There are very long lists of System and svchost.exe files said to be
stopping me from removing this drive. I can and have used the force
option but I'm not sure how much potential damage might be caused by
that. Do the type of system files I mentioned directly affect my
personal workfiles as they move to and from the drive?

svchost.exe is normally C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe it is not a file
I would expect to see on a USB HDD, unless I was booting from it.
However, I guess svchost.exe is a process name, and that this process
has open files on the USB hdd. The svhost.exe is used to run windows
services. In your set up a windows service might be configured to look
at files on the USB HDD. To get any clue of what is going on you need to
know the names of these actual files on the USB HDD. The problem is that
there will be many svchost processes and it won't be obvious which one
is causing the problem.
If you don't have sysinternals (I think it was actually pocmon.exe noy
filemon), MS windows Resource Monitor allows you to look at disk
activity, files being used. I'm not sure if it covers locked files. I
remember finding blocking files/process way more difficult than it
should be.

Thanks for your help Pancho. I'd love to delve into the intricate
labyrinth of investigations you describe but I'm running out of time
for such demanding projects. So I'm just going to take Jaimie's advice
and yank it.

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

On 15 Nov 2024 at 09:51:47 GMT, "Mike Halmarack"

Post by Mike Halmarack
I try to stand it down, using a "USB Safely Remove" utility but in the
case of this particular drive, I get the message: "Cannot be stopped
for now, close all applications that have open files on the disk...l"
Then I'm given a long lists of 'System' and 'svchost' files that need
to be closed before the disk can be stopped.
I have several other smaller external drives which seem to only be
active when I'm uploading or downloading files to them, which seems
like a preferable option to me.
Any suggestions on this?

svchost is just a wrapper for system services of all sorts. It's
incredibly unuseful to know what's actually occurring. 'system' isn't
really any better.

But odds are high it's (a) an antivirus scan and/or (b) Windows search
indexing.

You can see the scan progress by looking in the AV's interface. You can
exclude locations from Windows search indexing (don't ask me how, I've
disabled it entirely as No Use At All).

Either way, they'll just be reading files, not writing anything so you
can still safely eject the bloody thing. As long as the drive is NTFS
not some form of FAT format, I'd just yank it to be honest.

Cheers - Jaimie

[Mike Halmarack]

On 18 Nov 2024 15:26:48 GMT, Jaimie Vandenbergh

Post by Jaimie Vandenbergh
On 15 Nov 2024 at 09:51:47 GMT, "Mike Halmarack"

Post by Mike Halmarack
I try to stand it down, using a "USB Safely Remove" utility but in the
case of this particular drive, I get the message: "Cannot be stopped
for now, close all applications that have open files on the disk...l"
Then I'm given a long lists of 'System' and 'svchost' files that need
to be closed before the disk can be stopped.
I have several other smaller external drives which seem to only be
active when I'm uploading or downloading files to them, which seems
like a preferable option to me.
Any suggestions on this?

svchost is just a wrapper for system services of all sorts. It's
incredibly unuseful to know what's actually occurring. 'system' isn't
really any better.
But odds are high it's (a) an antivirus scan and/or (b) Windows search
indexing.
You can see the scan progress by looking in the AV's interface. You can
exclude locations from Windows search indexing (don't ask me how, I've
disabled it entirely as No Use At All).
Either way, they'll just be reading files, not writing anything so you
can still safely eject the bloody thing. As long as the drive is NTFS
not some form of FAT format, I'd just yank it to be honest.
Cheers - Jaimie

It takes a man of great knowlwge to come up with such a simple and
effective solution.
Just yank it I will. Thanks

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

On 18 Nov 2024 at 17:39:54 GMT, "Mike Halmarack"

Post by Mike Halmarack
On 18 Nov 2024 15:26:48 GMT, Jaimie Vandenbergh

Post by Jaimie Vandenbergh
On 15 Nov 2024 at 09:51:47 GMT, "Mike Halmarack"

Post by Mike Halmarack
I try to stand it down, using a "USB Safely Remove" utility but in the
case of this particular drive, I get the message: "Cannot be stopped
for now, close all applications that have open files on the disk...l"
Then I'm given a long lists of 'System' and 'svchost' files that need
to be closed before the disk can be stopped.
I have several other smaller external drives which seem to only be
active when I'm uploading or downloading files to them, which seems
like a preferable option to me.
Any suggestions on this?

svchost is just a wrapper for system services of all sorts. It's
incredibly unuseful to know what's actually occurring. 'system' isn't
really any better.
But odds are high it's (a) an antivirus scan and/or (b) Windows search
indexing.
You can see the scan progress by looking in the AV's interface. You can
exclude locations from Windows search indexing (don't ask me how, I've
disabled it entirely as No Use At All).
Either way, they'll just be reading files, not writing anything so you
can still safely eject the bloody thing. As long as the drive is NTFS
not some form of FAT format, I'd just yank it to be honest.
Cheers - Jaimie

It takes a man of great knowlwge to come up with such a simple and
effective solution.
Just yank it I will. Thanks

I've long given up on waiting for Windows to complete doing stupid
things.

Updates, yes. Too high odds of ending up with an unbootable system.
Other stuff that's clearly nonsense? Get tae fuck.

Cheers - Jaimie