Windows 10: External HD ALWAYS reports that it is in use when ejecting device

I have a WD 4TB Elements HD (2.5" USB 3 device). I use this to backup my laptop computer.

I'm finding that when I try to perform a clean eject of this drive it ALWAYS reports that the drive is in use and NEVER gives the okay to eject the drive.

What's odd about this is that I don't have this problem with any other devices. I use a lot of thumb drives and SSDs and they always allow an eject operation with no difficulties.

My solution is to simply no longer even bother trying to cleanly eject the drive - so long as I'm not actively doing anything with it, I simply yank out the USB cable, but that doesn't give me the warm fuzzies.

Anyone else see this issue and possibly have a solution?

This on Win 10 20H2.





I should note that I have closed every single program and even disabled antivirus scanning to see if it might be responsible. No luck.

:)

 

EXTERNAL HD

Hello,

To better assist you with connecting your external Hard Drive to your device, we appreciate it if you can answer the following questions:

• Have you checked the status of the drive in Device Manager?
  
• Have you tried updating the driver?
• What troubleshooting steps have you done so far?

In the meantime, we suggest running Microsoft easy fix by going to this link:

Find and fix problems with devices and hardware.

Looking forward to your response.

 

An error occured while ejecting

Hi Johnny,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community forum.



I suggest you to follow the steps listed in
problem ejecting USB mass storage device and check if it works.



Note: The article holds good for Windows 10.



Hope it helps.

 

External HD Connection Problem

I have attached an external HD to my computer running Windows 10 and it will not show up in my drive list. The properties shows it as Seagate.ink - what is an ink file and any suggestions as to how I can get it to work?