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I am using the latest Firestreamer (4.0.1) with DPM 2010 to back up to three external USB drives in rotation. In general everything is working very well, but I am unable to safely eject the USB drive after unlocking the library door, unloading the media and locking the library door again. I get a "generic volume cannot be stopped" message and I end up having to reboot the server in order to swap drives. Do you have any idea what might be causing this or how I might debug the problem?

I assume you use file media (.fsrm files). Firestreamer closes the files when you unload corresponding tapes, so it should not be the cause of the problem.

There may be some other software, like an antivirus or Windows Media Player, accessing the drive and thus preventing its removal. I also suspect it may be a problem of the NTFS file system.

Connect the drive, create a text file on it with Notepad, then try to safely remove the drive. Does it work?

Thanks you for your reply. You are correct, I am using the file media mode. I followed your document when preparing the drives.

The server is a dedicated, fully patched 2008 R2 server with no anti-virus.

If I create a text document on the USB drive, edit it with notepad and then save it back, I can still eject it successfully.

If I just load the media using the Filestreamer UI and then unload it immediately, I can eject it successfully.

If I load the media into DPM and then immediately unload it again (without any backup), I can no longer eject the drive.

I don't know if it makes any difference, but I have the .fsmap file on the USB drive in the root folder with the .fsrm files.

Make sure that you use "Unload All" in Firestreamer Snap-In before you eject the drive. If the problem persists, try Process Monitor from www.sysinternals.com to see which process is accessing the volume. See this post for an example.

I followed your document when preparing the drives.

The file media mode doesn't require any special preparation.

but I have the .fsmap file on the USB drive in the root folder with the .fsrm files.

It should make no difference.

Hello everybody,

we are using Firestreamer 4.0.0 with MS DPM 2010 on Win 2008 R2 Standard SP1 and have the same problem. Backup / loading and unloading the tapes works great, but the safely removal shows the same error as discussed here.

I checked with sysinternals and this is what i get (E: is our external HDD):

svchost.exe, pid 652, type handle, E:\$Extend\$Objld
svchost.exe, pid 652, type handle, E:\System Volume Information\tracking.log
System, pid 4, handle, E:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$Txf
System, pid 4, handle, E:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxfLog.blf
System, pid 4, handle, E:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxfLogContainer00000000000000000001
System, pid 4, handle, E:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxfLogContainer00000000000000000002

Any help is highly appreciated.

have a great day

I am sorry to say that we don't have an answer to this. The $Extend folder is used by Windows. If you Google for "$Extend ($ObjId | $RmMetadata) safe" you will see that other people experience the same problem. See, for example, this post. I think that the best way to resolve the issue is to contact Microsoft Support.

i did a little research too already and came up with the same conclusion. Thanks for your reply anyways! - i hoped someone might have an answer for this as the starter of this topic had or still has the same problem.

If I would figure out something, I will post it here.

cheers

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