What do you use to Force Eject USB drives (Windows 7/8)

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ClickRight

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Okay, so I just built my new Windows 7 rig. An issue that has plagued me-- and I'm sure you too is driving me nuts. When you go to eject a USB drive, you get the dreaded "This device is currently in use. Close any programs or windows that might be using the device, and then try again." error. It happens on Windows 8 still too :(

I have tried USB Disk Ejector, USB Safely Remove, Unlock Me, and a few others. They all work sometimes, but not others. I found USB Safely Remove to work the best during my trial, but it has it's quirks and at $200 it's a bit pricey for functionality that should be included in Windows.

Sometimes I just don't understand what could possibly be using the drive. For example, I put a new, zero-filled drive in my Thermaltake BlacX, and Windows won't eject it! I tried putting it "offline" in Disk Management -- same error. I'm looking for ideas on new products to try or a way to force eject drives.
 
If they won't eject properly, you have two choices 1) Yank and pray (usually something won't get written back to the stick) 2) Log Off and back onto Windows... try again 3) shutdown OR restart (should force everything to get committed)

^^^ Of course, fall all I know Windows might hang on shutdown for the same reason it can't eject the drive, so good luck.
 
99% of the time you can just pull the drive without problems. If it has an activity LED on it, make sure it's not flashing.
 
NETWizz said:
If they won't eject properly, you have two choices 1) Yank and pray (usually something won't get written back to the stick) 2) Log Off and back onto Windows... try again 3) shutdown OR restart (should force everything to get committed)

^^^ Of course, fall all I know Windows might hang on shutdown for the same reason it can't eject the drive, so good luck.
Click to expand...

Shut Down has always worked for me. Dont think logging off will be enough, especially if Windows thinks the process that has the volume locked is ran at System level, which it sometimes does....
But yeah, never had it hang when I tell it to shutdown to Safely remove devices. On the flip side though, I only bother to safely remove when a machines life is at stake (aka bios file or somethin major)!
 
JustInspired said:
What's that saying? "Life's too short to safely eject"

Did I read that right - $200 to eject USB devices?
Click to expand...

Sounds crazy, I know but if it saves time, it might be worth it. IE. If it always worked, I might have bought it!

I was working on an emergency job this weekend using my Windows 8 laptop. Had the client's drive connected via USB to SATA converter. Each time I wanted to eject I never knew if it was going to eject just fine or if I was going to have to shut down (not going to take any chances). It was about 50/50-- luckily windows 8 boots pretty quick but it was annoying as heck.
 
I've corrupted a flash drive by just unplugging it when it was still locked by some process. I use Sync by Sysinternals to flush the cache before risking an unsafe removal. In risky situations, I'll shut down the PC to disconnect a drive I don't want to risk corrupting. I find that some file indexing programs will lock files. LockHunter works most of the time, too.
 
I've seriously never had this problem. Maybe its just me. But this is also why I have multiple flash drives with the same info on it. If one gets messed up, no biggie.
 
I can't believe I'm still having an issue with this! Yesterday I said **** it and just pulled the problematic drive, only to have the computer run a lengthy chkdsk afterwards. (Drive activity light wasn't blinking when I pulled it.)

Today, I have a 320GB 2.5" drive in my Thermaltake BlacX. Usually this doesn't happen, but the drive activity light is blinking like CRAZY, yet I am doing nothing.

Try and eject from Windows: "This device is currently in use"
Use unlocker to see what is using the drive "Nothing is using the drive"
EJect USB says it cannot eject the drive.

Now I have to shutdown my computer just to eject this disk!?
 
ClickRight said:
Usually this doesn't happen, but the drive activity light is blinking like CRAZY, yet I am doing nothing.....
....Now I have to shutdown my computer just to eject this disk!?
Click to expand...

I was sitting in my shop last week watching a movie at night (I have a 10 foot projection TV here) and the lights are out, suddenly from the corner of my eye I see a flashing red light on my main machine. The USB stick is in the slot and its flashing like mad. I go over and I try to do the safe removal, but no go.

So I spend the next hour trying to pin down what was going on. No dice.

No viruses, no open programs that might be reading it, nothing on scheduled jobs, nothing in any event logs, nothing I can find in the A/V settings for Kaspersky.

The drive was in write protect mode (physical write protect) so I just yanked it. Reinserted and cant see the drive contents. Had to reboot to clear it up.

What happened ? Beats me, could have been some funky Windows "house cleaning" or indexing or some stupid shim of software doing discovery that I forgot I installed or it could be Kaspersky doing something not obvious to me.

I got so caught up in it I never watched the end of my "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry" DVD until the next day. :p
 
codegreen said:
I use EjectUSB. It's portable and free for any type of use. It doesn't seem to be maintained anymore, but I've never had any issues with it. Give it a try.
Click to expand...

I use this too; rarely gives me any problems. Didn't read the entire thread, but I know in disk managment (or device management for a drive) there is an option to use the drive with caching or not...or something like that. Might want to look into that. Also, I think there is a SysInternals (or other) program that checks for open 'handles' on drives/folders so you can pinpoint what's preventing the safe removal of the drive.
 
Vicenarian said:
I use this too; rarely gives me any problems. Didn't read the entire thread, but I know in disk managment (or device management for a drive) there is an option to use the drive with caching or not...or something like that. Might want to look into that. Also, I think there is a SysInternals (or other) program that checks for open 'handles' on drives/folders so you can pinpoint what's preventing the safe removal of the drive.
Click to expand...

You know, you would think that by using Disk Management to make a drive "Offline" that it would allow you to eject it--but no! All that happens when I select "offline" for a drive, is it accesses the drive like crazy for about a minute, then it says it's offline. But it still shows in "Safely Eject" and when you go to eject it says "This device is currently in use." At least this is what happens on my Windows 7 x64 pro machines. I think I'm just going to buy USB Safely Remove however their forums are not very positive: http://safelyremove.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1066
 
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