Rick47…let me take a stab at a comment.
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first, I had a reply to a user about Safe Eject, where user was getting warning messages when ejecting and was wondering…I posted something that worked for me. My adding this here was that you never had any warning when you did the Safe Eject? We and others did, so I was curious that you may not have a warning. Maybe its the drive itself or the surrounding WD software that runs in the background, when viewing the Task Manager. Anyway, here is the post/reply that I used to explain…Unable to safely remove My Passport
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now as to your physical disconnect…I believe that re-inserting is the only way to reactivate the USB port normally, HOWEVER…I have a 3.0usb hub that has 4 power on/off buttons that I connect to one of my PC’s 3.0usb port. I use this for other external printers and flash drives that I regularly insert and remove.
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here is what I tried just now. Did a Safe Eject of a connected Flash drive. Got message to remove and did not see the drive on my File Explorer. Next, I pressed Off button next to that usb, heard a chime that indicates a port removal. I still no longer see a Filemanager entry. Next, without removing the drive, I pressed the button back On, heard the chime and now see the drive in Explorer…So, it’s possible to turn on/off the port without removal of usb.
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now, here is a sticking point. I have read on this Forum, that one should use the direct usb connection instead of a hub. I’m not exactly not sure why, especially if it’s a 3.0 or higher hub and when you do connect, you see positive activity of that device. I see that when users have connectivity issues, one of the things posters/WD will say is to us a direct connect… since most of these newer drives are usb3.0 or higher, you PC and associated ports should be the same. Some PC’s have 3.0 and 2.0 mixture of usb. Anyway, you could consider this. After you eject, toggle the hub button off then toggle back on before you want to connect. Check the active connections and you are good to go…I think.
