Try going into my computer and right clicking on the drive sould be an option there to eject the drive..

thanks for the reply.
I did that, but nothing in there about disabling the drive.

:(

Im worried because its obviously causing my song files to become corrupted.

by the way, i just read on a website that i googled: if you shut down the computer first, then that would release all services that are using your external hard drive, and therefore it would be safe to turn external hard drive off after that.

is that true?

ya that is safe b/c the computer is not reading the drive any more..also what are the specs of your harddrive..

i have a WD 250 gig drive. 7200.. usb.

thanks for the reply. so i guess i'll just shut down pc from now on.
still wondering why vista doesnt show the little "safely remove hardware"...
Even when i use run command to enter: C:\windows\System32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll that will show the "safely remove hardware" but still my drive doesnt show up. I tested two drives. and also put same two drives on another vista laptop & still not detected in the safely remove hardware. but yes i can still use the drive. just wondering why they got rid of the remove hardware feature. now we have to shut down the pc completely?

if your hardrive is like mine i have a blue circle on the front of it if you press it and hold for a few seconds it will also turn it off...i just looked on my sisters comp and she has vista look for an icon that looks like a usb plug that should be the safely remove hardware icon....i hope that will help you a little bit more..

no i dont get the safely remove icon at all. its weird. even when i manually pull up the safely remove menu (via the run command), my drive is not listed in it.

yeah mine has a blue light also. but holding the blue lighht in for a few seconds is like turning it off before its ready. supposedly it says you should just touch the blue light button quickly & it will shut down. but mine will begin flashing then stay solid again. im assuming its locked up. but if i hold button in for like 4 seconds it will turn it off like you say. but read that was not ideal.

Hey sorry for long reply but my brother has the same drive and he said that holding it down is safe the flashing that you see is the drive reading after it is does flashing you can hold it down....

thanks for the reply.
Thats what ive done in the past, but stil always seem to get corrupt songs that were not corrupt before. oh well.

thanks again.

no prob i hope you will be able to find a solution i will keep researhing it for you...keep me posted if you figure it out.

thanks. Im transferring music to internal drive now. still will be using a external drive for the backup, so i still hope to figure this out eventually. lol. but ive googled and read alot of things but nothing seemed to apply to my situation. I think im going to just ask a tech guy from bestbuy or something. lol.

:) hopefully they know.

You definitely don't just want to turn the drive off via the big blue button.
This is not the way to safely remove the drive.

You should definitely still see a little hard drive icon in the lower right corner of your desktop indicating you have a drive connected.

If your not seeing that, and your also not able to eject the drive by right clicking on the actual drive via double clicking on 'Computer', then I would suggest contacting someone at Microsoft and asking them?

Thanks. I just borrowed a drive from a friend to try a different drive.
The new drive displays the "safely remove hardware" icon... yet my older WD drive still does not. Maybe my drive just isnt supported under vista. because it shows the "safely..." icon on XP, just not on my new vista laptop.

Hm.. very strange? I'm not too keen on WD Passport drives.
If I were you I would invest in a different one.

definately.
im going to buy the same exact one that i just borrowed from my friend (since i know it works with vista)...
mine was not a passport. its a WD but i dont even recall the full name of it anymore.. its only 250 gigs and big like a bible. lol. (says wd 2500 is the model) lol its old.

Cool.. I'm going to close this thread for now. If you'd like to open it up again just re-post;)