No "Safely Remove Hardware" option for WD external drive

[chriswing]

Hi

I can't eject my external drive for some reason. There's no eject button when I right click on the drive, no "safely remove device" icon in taskbar, the eject button in windows explorer (manage->drive tools->eject) is greyed out and there's no policies tab in the drive's properties. I've checked the drive for errors with the windows error checking tool and with chkdsk command (only the chkdsk x: /f one) and everything is fine. All my usb drivers are updated, so that should not be an issue. If I touch the drive case I can see that it's working (the usual vibrating noise/feel) and led light is on, not flashing. Also, when I plug other usb drives I can see the eject button and the "safely remove device" icon in taskbar only for them.

How should I safely unplug the WD external drive from my pc without damaging it?

Thanks.

 

[biffzinker]

Is there any other partitions in use on the drive? The only other cause would be a Windows Feature Update creating a hidden partition if the drive was left plugged in.

 

[chriswing]

In disk management there's only one partition for this drive (NTFS Healthy Basic Data Partition).