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Since I removed the USBs drive letter for the raw partition per the instructions here, Windows 7s "Safely Remove Hardware..." taskbar icon no longer detects my USB. So, how should I safely remove my USB?

There doesn't seem to be anything on this problem in the TrueCrypt FAQ.

Community
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SEL
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2 Answers2

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There is no need to safely remove the USB drive - so long as the TrueCrypt volume is not mounted. "Safely Remove Hardware" is only required when Windows has mounted the USB drive to a drive letter. The purpose of "Safely Remove Hardware" is to let Windows finish writing files to the flash drive before it is removed, and since Windows is not mounting, reading, or writing to the drive itself, there is no need to safely remove the drive. You can just unmount the TrueCrypt volume on the drive, and then remove the drive.

Kale Muscarella
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You can just unplug it! "Safely Remove Hardware" makes sure that nothing is using the partitions on your drive so the data doesn't get corrupted. Since, as far as Windows is concerned, there aren't any partitions on this drive, nothing can access it and there's no danger. As long as you've unmounted your TrueCrypt volume, you can safely remove the drive at any time.

jabberwik
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