Safely disconnecting Garmin GPs from computer

Look under "My computer" Click on drive for storage, then see if it allows you to select "eject"

Rereading my original post, the GPS was not being updated at the time. Actually was going to download some POIs. The GPS was just hooked up and started Garmin Express. There was a small update available but didn't start the download. Nor did I attempt to start the process of downloading POIs. Decided there wasn't enough time to do this today so unplugged the GPS after not being able to "safely" remove the device. The PC is running Windows 7 (vista). Googling found comments that you shouldn't "just pull the plug". Yes, I did unhide the hidden icons looking for the icon to safely remove the device. It was not there.

navybanker:
What operating system are you running?

I would love to agree with you, but my computer went a little wild when I just pulled the cord. The mouse wouldn't work to start/control any programs. The PC was useless and I started to do a hard shutdown/restart since could not shut it down the safe way. Luckily it recovered and starting working again. This is second time this has happened when just pulling the plug. Need to find a way to disconnect safely. Googling, it seems that you have to add a device and then disconnect the device you added. This is under "printers and devices". But trying to make sure before causing other problems. The PC recognized the GPS as a storage device??

I disconnect by going to task bar right side and open window for "hidden Icons" Then click on USB device, then GPS drive.
I am running Win 10.

The reason why it is necessary to "Safely Remove" certain USB devices is because of cached writes. In order to improve performance, the Windows OS will delay writing data to a disk drive because it is a fairly slow operation. When you click on the "Safely Remove" icon, you are telling Windows to write any cached data to the disk. You won't get the safely removed message until the data is safely written.

Since the GPS isn't a disk drive, writes aren't cached so there's no reason to "Safely Remove" it.

You can turn off cached writes for a drive so that you never need to worry about safely removing it. You'll give up a little performance though. Enable/disable Disk write caching

Life is too short to mess around ejecting USB devices. Close Garmin basecamp or express and then pull the plug. :)

bcsdguy wrote:
Apple devices are the same way. Just pull them out.

Actually you eject Apple devices through iTunes by clicking on the small triangle by the name of the device.

Apple devices are the same way. Just pull them out.

Have been updating our maps for Garmin for years...only way I know to disconnect is to just pull the usb cable...It has never caused us any issues.