Computer help forum: How do I safely remove USB hardware drives, when it says it's still in use?!

Maybe not, but he's not the only one who has this problem with USB devices. I have it all the time with my USB flash drives on Win7 Home Premium 64-bit , so it seems to be more common than you and others may know about. It's an intermittent problem for me. I try to eject the USB device and get the message "In use". Then I try a second time and get a window with three options: "Retry", "Continue", and "Cancel". The first option is pointless, the third defeats my goal, but the second one shuts down and ejects the USB device. I don't know whether others have this hap[pen to them, but it's happened to me countless times. I've also found that one brand of USB flash drive just doesn't work well with my system: Patriot. I've had to junk three of them already, so I don't buy that brand anymore. The guy who manages the computer shop where I buy my peripherals is always surprised to hear that my Patriots go south on me all the time, because no one else complains about them. I'm not making a general claim about the brand, only about how my desktop and notebook don't play nicely with them.

I have stopped using the safe ejection button long back... at least for the last five years as far as flash drives are concerned. Never once lost data or corrupted a file. I am not really recommending this to anyone, but just think of the cumulative seconds gained if you dont have to do that everytime.

Gopalakrishnan.

Thanks for this. I'd forgotten all about this option.

The process in my XP machine is slightly different. It is: my computer, highlight USB device. Right Click > properties > hardware tab. Highlight USB device > properties > policies tab. Choose quick removal radio button.

Hi, Roderick D.

i,ve read your problem you had with ejecting the USB drives. whenever there is a problem in ejecting the USB DRIVES , please never pull it directly. there is always a procedure in case of electronics items. For your case and cases similar of ejecting problems, viruses are the cause. So there are 2 ways:

way-1 (recommended):- There is a software name "Unlocker" , you can download it from internet. It is very easy to install and use. The " unlocker " is a software used to forcefully unlocked or eject the drives which does not eject easily and shows that the drive or disk is currently in use...

way-2:- The second way is to force it shut down and remove it from the USB ports.... and before plugging USB drive again to the system. please update ur system and the antivirus you use.
if this does not fix ur problem, then format the 'c- drive' or please contact a technician.

Usually the way-1 will clear your problem....

in case of further assistances please send an e-mail me in: sagardas.available@gmail.com

Take care,
Have a Nice Day

Pain in the butt when you get the error something is accessing the drive and cant disconnect safely.
Here's what worked for me.
Download Process Explorer - http://download.cnet.com/Process-Explorer/3000-2094_4-10223605.html
( Still works just checked ) Un-zip it,
its not an installation file, just run the program called procexp.exe

Click Find on the menu, Find Handle or DLL in the tool menu.
Type the drive letter of the USB device in the Handle or DLL substring textbox ( eg: D: ), and press Search Button.
Find the process and its PID in the following box.
In system process tree view, find the process according to the Find Handle or DLL dialog box.
Press Ctrl + H to show Handles in Lower Pane View. ( this is on the main window )
Find the File according with the drive letter , and right click it, choose Close Handle.

I found several Handles trying to access the same file that was on the drive, closed them all and FFS it worked ! Clicked safely remove the drive and clicked remove the drive. ( take note of the file the handle(s) are pointing too )

Just
this one drive was pissing me off not being able to remove the bugger, I
always turned the puter off to pull it out. ( "sometimes i just pulled it out without turning the puter off" *risking
losing data doing this* )

For some reason It would always be
stuck trying to access the same file, no matter which day I plugged it in, it
wasn't just a *one off time*

UPDATE, I removed the handles accessing the file and was able to remove it ok, BUT, the next time I plugged in the drive I had the same issue, So, I moved the problem file off the drive and from then on, no more issues removing the drive.
However I did not put the file back on to check if it still had problems removing the drive.
Hope this helps.

PS. this file for me was a movie file so I was wondering if one of the media players I use was still trying to play the file.... Keep a look out for that.

USB disk ejector it's free and works great

Download at
http://quick.mixnmojo.com/software/usb-disk-ejector

99% efective
I use it ALL the time

Simply reboot your computer, shut off your external drive and unplug it from your USB port after the computer has shut down, but before it restarts. When you next plug your external hard drive into your USB and turn it on, plug and play will "rediscover" it.

I had this same problem with my USB drive, but I figured it out after awhile. Just follow these steps (which helped a friend of mine figure out the same problem):
1. What software does your USB drive have on it? Is it a plain USB drive, or does it have any "OS"? (Like what is on the Sandisk Cruzer.) Disable software from autostarting on the USB drive.
2. If it does have a "OS" on it, does it have software that runs when you put it in? (Like antivirus software.) You can cancel the scan.
3. If it doesn't, does antivirus software on your computer automatically scan USB drives? Cancel the scans.
4. Do you have any files open on the USB drive? (Like a document.) Close the windows.
I hope this helps.

What you have not stated is what else is or was open. I have accessed flash drives with a word processor then closed the file and moved on, when I tried to shut down the flash drive, it would not shut down without exiting the word processor. Another instance that will cause a USB device to not allow shut down is if you are accessing the drive via Explore or any software that is performing an Explore type function.

I have not had any instances where the online back up I use has precluded the USB device from being shut down, but the possibility exists.

On a worst case scenario, try closing everything you may have open, even the ones running in the background (on line back ups, search, virus software, etc.)

Do you have a NTFS formated external hard drive?
When using that file system, there is ALWAYS some files open. This the transactional journal and the Master File Table.
Then, unless that drive have been set to performance instead of safety, it's safe to disconnect it as the safety mode disable the write cache of the drive, thus preventing any data loss or corruption.
If the drive was set to performance and do use it's write cache, dumping a large throw away file to the drive will ensure that any legitimate data will get effectively writen to the disk. The scratch file should be something like about 8 to 16 Mb in size, or the actual size of the drive's cache.

Is Windows explorer open? If the content is visible, then you probably can't shut down the device. It can keep a device buzy as long as there is at least one explorer window open, even if it's minimized. The content of a device may not need to be displayed. There is a chance that if you moved, copied or deleted any file, that the explorer will keep that device buzzy untill all windows are closed.
Close any explorer window and use the icon in the notification area.

Then, it's possible that the hard drive may cause a miss interpretation of the other medias. It's also possible that Windows gets confused if there are to many devices connected at the same time, especialy if you use an USB hub or some other multiple connection adaptor or concentrator.
Shut down the external hard drive first, then try to safely disconnect the other medias one at the time. As soon as one device have a success result, remove it. Continue with the others.

If every thing else fails, shut down the computer. This will force every devices connected to be released. When the computer is off, you can safely remove any devices.

If a device become unaccessible after been improperly disconnected, it may possible to save it be reformating it. Be sure to use the same file system as the original one, specialy for your camera.

I put the computer in sleep mode and then remove the usb device and then take the computer out of sleep mode and go on computing.........faster than rebooting and trying to unplug just before windows reloads.

When that happens, the best method is to either Log Off, or Restart.
If you log off, wait until you are at the Log In screen to pull out your device.
If you restart, wait until after it says it's shutting down and then the screen turns black and it starts to reboot.|

On those devices that are no longer recognized on your computer or laptop:
1) Right-click on the Computer icon
2) Choose "Manage".
3) Choose "Disk Management"
4) At the lower part, where it has the bar graphs of the disk drives, scroll down until you find the USB device. It probably doesn't have a drive letter assigned to it, so you need to assign one.
5) To assign the drive letter, right-click on the USB device in question and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths".
6) Click on ADD and assign it a drive letter.
It is now ready to go again.

I have beem using flash drives for many years with WIN/XP. I use a flash drive often and always just pull the drive out when I'm finished. I have never ever had any problem. Don't plan on using any other method.

I have a few external hard drives that do this and the only way I feel comfortable removing them is to reboot my computer and remove the hard drive once the system turns off and the hard drive is no longer attached.

I do have Window7 and the external drive does not show up on the reboot screen notfying me of open programs or files so I don't know why it will not shutdown gracefully.

You are very right about not removing pen drives without stopping them first.

Even when the drive appears to be "not in use" by you it could still be in use by some other function in the system.

Or sometimes it can be just that the system function that was using the device forgot to shut it off properly and it's still running.

One of the main problems with removing a pen drive is to do with buffering. Buffering works to make the PC look like it's actually completed a task when really it hasn't. This is because when computers write data to drives (even hard drives) they normally build a buffer of the data, and then write all the data in one go. It is quicker to write a big wad of data than to keep writing small 1kb changes every 5 seconds.

This is the reason you should never remove your drive unless the computer knows it has fully finished using the drive, because some of the data could be still sat in the buffer, if you remove the drive then you will lose the buffered data.

Normally with buffering though this tends to clear up on the second or third attempt, because by this point Windows realises you really want to remove the drive and flushes the buffer.

Some of the other things that can take control over devices and still use them are some music players, like WinAMP when it assigns your device as a media player. It could still be using your pen drive in the background, or sometimes if it's playing a song from your pen drive. Document readers and web browsers can also do the same, if they are downloading content to the drive.

Then you can also have viruses, some viruses write to pen drives and Windows isn't able to release them either. The worst trick is when they create a hidden file on the root of the drive called "AUTORUN.INF" this allows the virus to automatically install itself onto the next computer the drive is plugged into.

Sometimes just having a windows explorer window open can also tell Windows the drive is in use, even though it isn't, try closing the Explorer windows open (My Computer, My Documents, etc).

If all else fails there are two tricks you can try...

First one - this is very risky and could result in data loss but most of the time is fine, wait for your hard drive light (red light) on your computer to full go out and for the drive to stop whirring all together (that's handy if the hard drive light on your computer isn't connected). Once you've made sure that the hard drive light has stopped flashing, and you've closed all open programs down, then remove the drive. Most of the times this works fine, but not 100% guaranteed.

Secondly - Shut the computer down (by using start->shut down or pressing the power button and waiting for windows to do it's shutdown (nb don't hold the power button down as that's an emergency shut down), I know it can be a bit of a pain powering down and then back up again if all you want to do is remove the drive, but if you shut your computer down, and then remove the drive after the power is off the computer certainly can't be writing data to it.

Also if you have a drive that you suddenly find no longer works in your PC try this trick - shut the computer down fully, remove the power cable from the back fully (or in the case of a laptop remove the battery and mains charger). Plug it all back in and then reboot. Your drive might revive itself then - I was so surprised at this trick, and the reason for this is that when Windows detects what it believes to be a "damaged" USB device, it sets a flag in the memory to tell it that this device is damaged, the memory that holds this information is on the same circuit that lights up the green led on your motherboard (the one that only goes out if you actually unplug the computer from the mains), so no matter how many restarts, or power downs you do you'll never reset it without unplugging fully. It took me ages to figure that one out when I had a device that would work on all other computers except on, and I just couldn't get my head round why this one PC just didn't like the device, I then found the answer on the net and couldn't believe it would actually work, until I tried it.