Comments on: How do I stop windows from taking over my portable hard drive

Question: How do I stop windows from taking over my portable hard drive

Syntoad — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:40:02 -0800

I have a portable usb hard drive that I use for keeping all my documents / backups on. Windows seems to love using this drive for everything, for example I am installing IE7 from windows update, and it is using the drive to hold all the temporary files during the install. Because of this the drive is always in use and I can never eject it.

Using unlocker I can see that no less than three services are holding files open on this drive, and system restore is also using it (even though I disabled it for the external drive)

How can I get windows to treat this external the same way it treats a USB stick, instead of it treating it like an actual hard drive?

By: Syntoad

Syntoad — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:42:14 -0800

Actually system restore decided to turn itself back on for the drive (it might do this every time I plug it in,) and I just turned it off. The three svchost.exe processes still have a hold on files though.

By: le morte de bea arthur

le morte de bea arthur — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:59:03 -0800

It sounds a lot like Windows is using the disk as virtual memory. On XP you can check this by doing My Computer (right-click) -> Properties -> Advanced Tab -> Settings (Performance box) -> Advanced Tab -> Change (Virtual memory box). Select the drive letter and check whether it has a paging file associated with it. It shouldn't.

This may not be the answer though - I can't think how you would have ended up with a paging file on the external disk in the first place...

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:42:36 -0800

Take a look at the graphic on this page under Enable advanced write caching. Your USB drive should be set to the first option on that page, Optimize for Quick Removal.

By: Syntoad

Syntoad — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:21:53 -0800

It is both set to optimize for quick removal, and is not set up for paging.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:26:39 -0800

What are the files that Unlocker shows as being open?