My Book Essential USB 3.0 - safely remove problem

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

Well I bought the Western Digital Hard Drive My Book Essential 1TB USB 3.0.

And I have a problem. Somehow I just can´t format, safely remove or upgrade

the firmware on the disc.

The reason is that it still gives me a statement which says: The disc couldn´t be

removed right now, because it is still in use.

But I am not using it,  I have never even use it for data transfer.

Any idea?

2

I have a similar problem with MY Book Essentials USB 2.  I have contacted support, but until they respond I go into the Task Manager and terminate the WD Smartware.exe task.  I can then remove the hardware with no problem.

3

That’s probably not the right solution because I have even not installed the SmartWare yet…

4

Neither did I.  Apparently it loads when the drive is plugged into the USB port.  Check your Processes in Task Manager to see if WD SmartWare.exe is running.

5

I checked it out but nothing called like WDSmartWare was there… Any other idea?

6

Sorry, I don’t.  Good luck.

1 Like
7

But thanks for the try…

Please write me if you will get to know something from the WD support

8

Try two things…

  1. Disable or temp remove antivirus program.
  2. Try using USB 2.0 port instead of USB 3.0 port.
9

Will do.

But just to reiterate, the process, not an application, is only in Task Manager when the drive is plugged into your USB port.

10

I know what a process is, but unfortunately there is no. /When the HDD is plugged, of course./

I tried switching the antivirus offline, it doesn’t help.

I am using USB2.0 portt, not the USB3.0 /I bought it because I will use it in future/

11

I had similar problem (unable to safely remove …), spent hours to solve that - turning off antivir did not help, ProcessExplorer showed no process using the external drive …

Finally I ended up with uninstalling one piece of software after another, disabling uncriticall services etc … what helped me was to remove/uninstall virtuall PDF Printer that came with Software 602 Form Filler. I don’t know what this piece of SW had to do with the external disk, but now everything works fine.