I purchased a Maxtor 40 gig hard drive that plugs into an available USB port in front of my computer. It doesnt look great having wire wrapped around your computer and pluging into the front of it but I figured I could just right click the eject hardware icon on my WinME lower right corner by the clock. Well when I click remove and select Drive H to "stop" it tells me that it cant do it now and to try again later. Well I did wait and tried later (about half an hour) This is a brand new drive and has nothing on it- I had just installed it and was trying to figure out a good location for the hard drive (on top of the tower, next to the tower, under cables, on the floor, etc.) since it isnt giving me an OK to unplug the USB cable when I select the hardware eject icon would it be OK to just pull the USB out? What could happen? Would my comp freeze up untill the USB is reinserted or would I lose contents already on the new drive. I've seen a patch at the Win update site but I think it might be for games or game controllers. Might this help clear up this eject USB problem or am I making a big deal out of nothing? Oh ya I also ran scan disk, disk doctor and system check and the problem wasnt fixed. Also when the Maxtor drive gets a drive letter can I plug it into any USB space available adn keep that same drive letter? Say if I was to buy a small USB and connect it towards the back of the computer -were my scanner and zipdisk USB plug ins are?

With external USB devices, it gives you that "busy" message if you have anything accessing it. This occurs even if you just have it open in a windows explorer window. Your computer would probably not freeze up if you just pulled it. However, if there were data on it it could get corrupted. I'm not sure if it would keep the same drive letter, especially if you connected another device before it.

i thought usb was hot swapable Politically correct virus: Never calls itself a "virus", but instead refers to itself as an "electronic microorganism".

USB is hot swapable (you do not have to turn off the computer) but to avoid data corruption on any drives that can be saved to, you need to unmount the drive through the use of the driver. This is usually done from an icon in the system tray, or by right clicking the drive in my computer and selecting "Eject".

When I right click the Maxtor Drive icon in My Computer I dont get an option for "Eject" (I get options for Open, Explore, Format, Rename , Properties, etc...)but when I go to the "Unplug or Eject Hardware" icon in the lower right corner (a few icons away from the clock) and select it and click the stop option I get a message: The device "USB Disk" cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later. And this is listed in a grey box with a red circle with white X in the middle of it. The title of this retangular box is "Problem Stopping Device" Any help ejecting properly is needed :) thanks