Windows 10: External drive can't be safely ejected due to in use : How do I know which process/app is...

Hi! Ocasionally, when I wanna safely eject my external, this msg box appearsI close every file explorer windows, but still, so, how do I know which things is using my externals, so I can close them before I remove my externals?

:)

 

Windows10 randomly refuses to safely eject external disks

Hello there,

More than 11 months ago I expose in these forums some problems in Windows10.

One of them is the denial to safely eject external disks.

Here is what happens: I connect one of my external disks to my pc, then I move/copy/delete/edit/view some files, and later, after closing EVERYTHING, Windows10 refuses to safely eject my disk. It replies, "Windows can't stop your 'Volume' device because
a program is still using it".

Windows doesn't tell me what program is employing my drive. And I know for sure there is nothing employing it.

That issue happens randomly. I mean, sometimes I can safely eject the disk, and sometimes I cannot.

Today I downloaded from Microsoft the app named "procexp64.exe" which showed me what is employing my external disk.

And, they are Windows processes only!

Let's say my disk's root ID is "M:\"

The Process Explorer found:

• Four "system" processes with open files in M:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$Txf.........
• Two "explorer" processes with open directory M:\

Hence, Windows doesn't allow me to safely eject my external disk because Windows forgot it was itself the one using my disk!

Almost 1 year has passed, and the issue still persists.

Annoying!

 

Windows 10 Eject Button Missing for external hard drive

Why would, of all things, the eject button of a mounted external hard drive go missing? That's a Windows operating system for you. I'm using Explorer and right-clicking over the drive letter - but, no listing for ejecting the drive. Anyway, before I just rip out the USB cable of my external hard drive - is there a reasonable solution (that's under 25 nebulous steps) to just EJECT a freakin' hard drive plugged into Windows 10? Is it really necessary for every little thing in Windows to turn into a complicated procedure?

But, the option to format the external drive is in the menu.

 

External USB connected HDD will not Eject due to being in use

Having recently found this to be an issue I looked for an answer. All the answers I found involved assuming that there was an underlying issue with Windows or drivers.

I had noticed that at times the device could be ejected and therefore was unlikely to be related to the configuration.

I have found that if the drive is available at Boot time it is treated as being part of the system and therefore, despite there being an option to eject it in the Taskbar, it will not. When the drive is powered on after boot it can be ejected.

I did try to find a way of declaring the drive as a removable device but it appears there is no such setting in Windows. The suggested methods of changing the Policy settings for the drive made no difference.

According to the article below it is the BIOS that determines this. The article is related to the opposite situation when an internal drive shows up as removeable media:

• Internal SATA Drives show up as removeable media

According to Device Manager, my external drive is located on USB Mass Storage Device. I would assume that this would qualify as removable media.

Using ProcessExplorer and searching for "X:" shows 3 processes:

• explorer.exe 7992 File X:
• explorer.exe 7992 File X:
• WWAHost.exe 10120 Mutant \Sessions\1\AppContainerNamedObjects\...

The explorer processes both show that SearchIndexer.exe has SearchFilterHost.exe and SearchProtocolHost.exe connected.

As far as I understand this is related to the Indexing feature. This feature is unchecked in this drives properties.

While ensuring the drive is off at boot time is okay I would like to know if there is any way of fixing the issue.