I have a 1 TB Toshiba Canvio Desk external hard drive. So I go ahead and backup my stuff and the drive quits turning, its work is done and the site tells me all is completed. When I go to "Safely remove hardware" as per icon, I get the message "The device 'Generic Volume" cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later." And of course, that magic later moment never ever comes along. I get the same message over and over. Everything is closed out, staring at a bare desktop, nothing happening, and all I get is this dumb message. So I just closed out and switched off the computer. Is that hurting anything? What can I do to stop this happening?

Windows 7 has something set wrong if you are showing 2.6GB usable. Windows 7 will recognize 3GB regardless of whether it is 32 bit or 64 bit.

The usual way to back up files is to just open my computer and open the drive that is the external hard disk and just drag and copy the files over. You would then do the same this king to drag the files back to your computer. I am assuming you did not do this and usedsome software that came wwith the drive. In that case I would still open the drive in my computer to see if its there or otherwise u need to use the same software u used to backup the files to recoverthem. If you ccan't figure it out I would redo saving the files the normal way like I explained before . An internal hard drive or even external storage device like USB thumb drive simply shows upas a new drive when plugged in. Do not use an software to save files as usually they are proprietary and use compression which is iinconvenient or makes it difficult to recover

It sounds like the drive could be full? Right click the drive and select properties. It will show you how much of the drive is used up

What? Did you lose the box and/or the manual? Try googling it, binging it, yahooing it, etc. but you might check ebay for manuals

try to search driver on manufacturer site

And your question is?

Format drive NTFS sounds like its corrupt, use mini partition wizard...
may also need 3TB Unlocker from manufacturer of Hdd

try it on another computer if that dosent work you should
reformat your computer but first backup all your data by putting your another internal hardrive on your computer and move all your files you need to the empty hardrive and after that take the hardrive with all your stuff in it off the computer and then reformat the hardrive which the external hardrive does not work on and install a new operating system then put the other hardrive with all your stuff back on your computer and transfer your stuff into the hardrive with a operating system then try the external hardrive

OR
you can burn all your stuff into a CD or a DVD
OR
you can put all your stuff into FlashDrives and then after you reformat the hardrive with an operating system put your stuff back into the computer and after that the external hardrive should work

try to partition it and format in differant filesystem eg. ntfs or fat32

The disk utility programs should be on the main drive inside the computer...you need to make sure you tell the program which drive you want to erase..Say the external drive comes up as drive "d"..then you want to tell the drive utility software to erase the "d" drive