Disconnected USB drive without ejecting.. fix?

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Disconnected a USB drive without ejecting first. Kept saying in use and wouldn’t allow ejection even after a long time with nothing seemingly using it so just disconnected it. It acts oddly now. It is just a backup so is it possible to still use it somehow or is the drive broken to the point of trash?

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Something was keeping a file handle open on the flash drive, Windows 7’s explorer.exe can do this frequently and is often the culprit.

Now what acts odd, the file system?

Or do you see dots when trying to eject it? If you see dots, try another port or better than that reboot the computer with it inserted into a port. That is how I was able to use two USB flash drives that would show … in the device ejection menu, your drive is likely fine and it is a Windows 7 problem.

Are getting a request from windows to reformat the drive shortly after device recognition? If so Cancel it and run a check disk (chkdsk) instead, only reformat if you can really afford to lose the all of the contents.

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If a USB driver matters to you eject it safely. If you don’t care about the data and something(your data / file system) breaks just reformat.

Flash drives are very poor at bad sector management and have no SMART interface to keep you in the loop about any of it, so if the drive is physically defective you may not know about it, but this shouldn’t matter either way for ejecting.

If you plan to keep reading and writing from a drive later after a failed eject (just unplugged) you should definitely run chkdsk (chkdsk /f /x /v X:) as soon as you can. NTFS formatted drives are much more resilient to corruption than FAT.

Also if you are totally stuck trying to remove a drive and you really want to remove it safely a true shutdown it also just as good as an eject. After a true shutdown all drives are effectively ejected. Remember though with ‘fast startup’ enabled clicking shutdown just hibernates your computer (after logging off) which DOES NOT count as a shutdown.
https://www.computition.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/disable-fast-startup.jpg

If you unplug a USB drive while fake shutdown (aka hibernated) it is like unsafely unplugging the device (if you use it in a different booted PC without plugging it back into the same port before resuming the hibernated computer and ejecting it normally)

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anonymous wrote:

If a USB driver matters to you eject it safely

I suspect you are referring to a USB drive (hardware) rather than a USB driver (software)…?

On occasions that I can’t convince a USB drive to disengage correctly, to permit safe removal, I usually find logging off that user works. It’s not always convenient, if you have other programs open that have unsaved work, but other than that, it can help. Of course, the other option is to turn the computer off, then remove the drive (also not always convenient!).

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Sorry, typo, I meant USB drive.

My point was if the computer is fully shut down all drives are currently ejected.

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Formatting will make the drive work as it should again? Should it be a quick format or the long one?

Thanks.

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If the drive is not damaged it will wipe the drive clean and format it. You will have a choice of FAT or NTFS – you need to check which format it has now if you can access it.

If the drive is damaged, replace it. Flash drives are cheap. USB3 is faster than USB2 for transfer of files, and ports are downward compatible.

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Flash drives are fairly fragile with the risk of losing data. I use flash drives for short-term storage or for porting files.

If you want more robust storage devices, get a couple of external hard drives and treat them nicely. Even external hard drives won’t last forever.

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Ascaris

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Thank you for the help. Do I choose quick or full? Fat or NTFS?

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Insert the old one
Go to File Explorer
Right-click on the drive & choose Properties
It will tell you if it’s FAT of NTFS.

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Full does a thorough format job. Quick removes filenames only, and leaves data on the disk.

NTFS is Windows operating system. FAT can be used on other operating systems in addition to Windows operating system.

Right click on the flash drive, select properties, and view file system. You will probably see FAT32.

If you think the flash drive is bad, start over with another flash drive. There’s no point in repeating a data-loss experience on the same flash drive.

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geekdom wrote:

NTFS is Windows operating system. FAT can be used on other operating systems in addition to Windows operating system.

Linux (in all the varieties I’ve tried, at least) and MacOS are both capable of reading and writing NTFS right out of the box.  MacOS (from what I have read) requires the user to enable NTFS writing first, but the ability is there.

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If you want to format to FAT32 and the external drive is over 32GB, you will need to download a converter. I found this out after I purchased a new sound system (I put all my music on an external) as it only recognises the FAT32 format.

Here is a link of how it’s done and the converter to download is the one I used. I also used the quick format as in the instructions.

HTH

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Note about this: if you format your USB flash drive as FAT32, you cannot store a 4Gb+ size file (like a 4GB ISO, WIM or ESD file) on it. that’s a limitation of the FAT32 file system. 4GB+ size files can be stored on drives formatted with either NTFS or exFAT.

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Format NTFS.

Full format DOES NOT overwrite recoverable data on the disk (it does delete the data just like a quick format). Full format does however read all the sectors and take a huge amount more time with little benefit (much like chkdsk /r).

“Formatting will make the drive work as it should again?” — If the cause was logical failure (too many bad unplugs corrupted the file system, then yes it should. If the failure was physical then sometimes (temporarily) and sometimes not.

Remember chkdsk (chkdsk /f /x /v X:) is good at restoring a logically corrupted file system to working order, and terrible at doing anything with a physical problem (chkdsk /r X:).

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Before doing anything, I suggest downloading Nir Sofer’s USBDeview (make sure you download the same ‘bitness’ for your OS, i.e. x32 or x64) then, after running it (using ‘Run as administrator’), right-click on the entry for the misbehaving drive and choose ‘Uninstall Selected Devices’.

This will remove the device’s details from the registry. The details will be repopulated the next time it’s inserted… but without any possible corruption caused by ejecting unsafely.

If you don’t remove the current, possibly corrupted, details then the device will continue to use them every time it’s inserted.

Hope this helps…

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MrJimPhelps

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Just an update.

First. Thank you all for the help.

I tested the drive again and it works fine right up until the point it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, it freezes the entire computer for quite awhile. Then checking event viewer lists a number of errors and warnings bad block, driver detected a controller error and error during paging operation. Eject never works either. Always does what https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/disconnected-usb-drive-without-ejecting-fix/#post-170530 mentions.

It is just a backup so I should go the format route first and then run the chkdsk /f /x /v X:? If that runs okay then the drive is okay to use to backup again? If not, then it is broken?

Do I do the chkdsk /r X: also?

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“It’s dead, Jim.”

Flash drives are cheap. Your data is not. Consider purchasing multiple reliable-name flash drives and at least two external reliable-name hard drives.

Multiple flash drives are computer candy. Use them as you need them for short-term data storage, testing purposes, or porting data.

External hard drives are for backups. Swap off between them and make complete system backups from time to time.

An unreliable flash drive is not a reliable data repository. Invest your time, money, and effort into building a reliable data repository.

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Ascaris

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Never do “chkdsk /r X:” it has no value.

Sounds like your flash drive is having read/write errors/delays. Its flash memory might be failing, or maybe the flash controller is failing. Without SMART insight we are blind to the faults of the drive.

A flash drive is not a good thing to use for backup since you have no idea if it is failing right from the first use.

What brand is the drive (not that the brand tells us what flash controller/memory is underneath)?

Also do you want to check your main hard drive / ext hard drive with GSmartControl while you/we are at it?

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I did a format on it, chkdsk /f /x /v and used USBDeview to uninstall and let it reinstall it again. I tried GSmartControl but it won’t run on the USB external due to not having SMART. chkdsk had no errors but it was said that doesn’t check physical issues right?

Is there anything else to try to confirm whether the drive is still usable or one unplugging without ejecting first (even though it was left unused for a long time before unplugging since ejecting first would not work) is enough to permanently damage the drive?

I did use the recommended GSmartControl on the C: drive since I tried it for the USB external drive anyway. I am not sure how to read the results as it says completed without errors but listed a few as pre-failure. Is that something to be concerned about or just the way it is and nothing to do about it anyway?

Thank you.

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Pre-failure suggests the drive is not happy, but we need the actual results to advise further. Can you post them?

cheers, Paul

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woody

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From an anonymous poster:

Paul T and the OP are confused about how to use GSmartControl. “Pre-failure” is a type of stat. It means if this attribute exceeds it’s threshold then it’s a pre-failure warning.
Also the OP is having trouble using it on a USB(?)external hard drive, sometimes it needs a setting change to do that (unless they are talking about the flash drive still, they don’t have anything GSmartControl can help with)

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<Quote>
“Pre-failure suggests the drive is not happy, but we need the actual results to advise further. Can you post them?”
<Quote>

<Quote>
“From an anonymous poster:

Paul T and the OP are confused about how to use GSmartControl. “Pre-failure” is a type of stat. It means if this attribute exceeds it’s threshold then it’s a pre-failure warning.”
<Quote>

I am confused about the pre-failure ones. There are several but only one of those has a Threshold number close to the Norm-ed value. That one is End to End Error Norm-ed value 100 Worst 100 Threshold 97 Raw value 0 Failed Never pre-failure PO–CK. The others all have Threshold numbers quite a bit below the Norm-ed value (200/51, 100/51, 180/21, 200/140).

<Quote>
“Also the OP is having trouble using it on a USB(?)external hard drive, sometimes it needs a setting change to do that (unless they are talking about the flash drive still, they don’t have anything GSmartControl can help with)”
<Quote>

The drive I would like to scan is a USB external drive. Not the thumbsize one that connects directly to the USB but connects to the USB with a short USB cable.

What setting change will get GSmartControl to scan that? It currently just lists the drive but the test option is blank and it says SMART is not available.

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Are you seeing stats like the image below? If so can you post them for us?

cheers, Paul

 

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From the same anonymous poster:

I got to looking at the latest version of GSmartControl, wow they’ve made a lot of improvements. Last I checked in with that project they were just starting the remake and I had reported a bug. They mixed up one of the 64-bit and 32-bit exe files, which wasn’t very noticeable on a 64-bit OS since the 32-bit version still worked, but on a 32-bit OS (like PE mode) it just couldn’t run. Now (in recent versions with new smartmontools) they’ve got access to new types of data from SSDs, and even more GUI improvements. You don’t even need to drop to the commandline to get a full log anymore (a hassle for less skilled users).

Best way to get a full log is to open the drive in question then click “view output”, then “save as”. Users may/should want to edit out their drive serial number. It tends to save with unix line endings so a user might want to open it with wordpad first and save once (wordpad opens files with unix line endings properly and saves with windows line ending).

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