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My question is, the HDD is seen by Windows as an unremovable drive (U - I don't remember now if it came that way, with the letter U assigned, or if I did that myself). It's listed as Disk 1, under Disk 0 (which is the OS on C: drive) in Computer Management.


I don't think your disk is non-removable. I think you probably assigned the disk the letter U at some point. This is a trick that some people use with external hard disks to force them to have the same letter when you disconnect and reconnect them. This way, a file can always be accessed using the same path, like U:\bb\bbw64.exe, instead of G:\bb\bbw64.exe one day and H:\bb\bbw64.exe the next.

If you assign a high drive letter, windows is less likely to change it the next time you plug the drive in, even if you've been plugging in other devices in the mean-time. Right-click on the Windows flag / 'start menu' and click Disk Management, and you can then right-click on your external hard disk and 'change drive letter / path'.

Windows being unable to eject your disk 'because there is a program using it' is a very common problem. Even if you don't have any Explorer windows open, and there doesn't appear to be any visible program running, there might be some background process using the drive - for example an antivirus program running a scan among a long list of other techy things. This is something that I think improved in Windows 10. Typically, Windows will now usually give the "ok" to eject a device on the second try even if it fails on the first - not sure of the reason behind that.

Andrew
PG Music Inc.