Windows 10: How to force-eject an external drive?

Avast:

 

Thanks. I had no idea the Avast icon in the System Tray could be right-clicked and more features accessed. I'm terrible at finding hidden features. I will try and see if disabling Avast before trying to eject a drive.

 

Not really hidden, it's long been a general design principle in Windows that a left-click selects or opens, while a right-click gives further options or controls. You can right-click on almost anything.

 

Hidden as in out of sight. After over 20 years on Mac computers, and just a bit over one month on the PC, I'm still getting used to the PC's idiosyncrasies.

 

Lots of those... suggest having coffee and paracetamol to hand.

 

It's not going to be a picnic!

 

If I try to shut down the computer so that I may safely remove the external drive, and if I get a pop-up that says the drive is currently in use, will that not mess up things if I shut the computer down? I'm not even sure I can shut the computer down under these conditions other than with a forced shutdown.

 

You simply press WIN + R to open RUN prompt, type shutdown -s -f -t 0 and hit Enter to force Windows to shut down. No worries, no lost data.

When done, disconnect the external USB device.

 

No, shutting down the computer will first shut down all running processes, including the one that's using the drive. You won't get a pop-up.

 

I thank you both. This puts my concern to rest.

 

I reckon you should experiment with disabling autorun / autoplay on external drives.

Open the Settings app and click Devices. Select AutoPlay from the left sidebar.




Apply the settings in the screenshot.

Run regedit then navigate to:

HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer

and

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Here is where it gets tricky. In each location check for NoDriveTypeAutoRun in the right pane. If it's not there right click and create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it NoDriveTypeAutoRun

Enter DD in hex as your value for the DWORD "NoDriveTypeAutorun" you created above. This will allow the installer CD ROMs you insert to still autorun but nothing else.

To disable autorun for ALL drives including CD ROM, enter the value of 255 decimal or FF hex.