Vista - External Hard Drive and Check Disk

Hi there, I have an external NTFS hard drive that is for storage use only.
It is connected Via USB. I am Running Windows Vista Home Premium SP1.

When I attempt to check my hard drive for errors with Check Disk I can't.
It says Windows can't check the disk for errors while it's in use. I proceed
to schedule a disk check but this doesn't work as you can't seem to schedual
disk checks for external USB hard drives.

Secondly it shouldn't be in use! It often fails to eject safely and says
windows can't stop it!

Two very frustrating problems.

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I'm having exactly the same problem - with a slightly different entry point. My entry is I'm trying to do a backup to the external disk, and I get an error which says "Windows has detected file system corruption (on the external drive), you must check the disk for errors before it can be restored." But when I try to check the disk, I run into the same problem as goorambatman.
Help??