Windows 10: How to safely remove an external drive?

I always have problems to safely remove an external drive:




The Task Manager causing an error message when I try to safely remove an external is closed.

There is no process shown accessing anything on the external drive:




What else could I do (besides of shutting down the Notebook) to safely remove the drives?

:)

 

Can't safely remove external disk

Hello Geotso,

Thank you for posting your concern in Microsoft Community and welcome to the Windows 10 Family.

From the description provided, I understand that you are unable to 'safe remove' the external device connected via USB.

Before proceeding any further, we need a few more details on the below questions.

• Is the issue specific to the particular removable drive you are referring to?
• Which Windows Service did you disable to fix the issue? Did it help?

As an initial recommendation , I suggest you to check if the same issue occurs when logged in to the computer using Safe Mode.

Safe Mode With Networking:

Follow the steps to boot to safe mode with networking:

• 
  Press the ‘Windows + R’ key on the keyboard.
  
• 
  In the ‘Run’ windows type ’MSCONFIG’ and click ‘Ok’.
  
• 
  Click the ‘Boot’ tab.
  
• 
  Under ‘Boot Options’, select the ‘Safe Boot’ option.
  
• 
  Choose the type of safe mode by selecting one of the options below the Safe boot check box: Select ‘Network’.
  
• 
  Click OK and then restart your PC.
  

Refer below link to Enable Safe Mode with Networking.

Start your PC in safe mode in Windows 10






If the issue does not occur in Safe mode, try to place the computer in a Clean Boot state and check if there are any third party application/software to be causing the issue.

A clean boot is performed to start Windows by using a minimal set of drivers and startup programs. This helps eliminate software conflicts that occur when you install a program.

How to perform a clean boot in Windows

Note: Steps mentioned for Windows 8/8.1, will work fine with Windows 10.

Disclaimer: Please go through the section: How to reset the computer to start as usual after troubleshooting with clean boot of the Kb article to boot the computer in normal startup after fixing the issue.

Write to us with the updated information for us to be able to assist you further.

Thank you.

 

I Am Unable to Safely Remove My USB External Hard Drive From My Laptop

I gave the wrong directions, its actually press WIndows key + X then click Task Manager. Select the Processes tab, you will see 'Windows Explorer' under Apps group.

 

I've had some luck with this by going in to the last program that accessed the external drive (usually Windows Explorer) and choosing and opening a file that is on an internal hard drive. This seems to "release" the external drive.

Beyond that, in most cases if you are sure there is nothing being written to the drive you can just unplug it. The problems tend to happen when a drive is disconnected while a read or write is going on.
But it is always best to get that "all clear-safe to remove" from Windows if you can.

 

For me it's usually Task Manager that needs to be closed to let me remove an external drive, but you say you've already closed that.

Try signing out then log back in again. That should close any processes you have running.

 

Thank you

I assume, Process Explorer / Hacker or so or "ThisIsMyFile" would have shown such a process, I couldn't find one.

May be Win is indexing anything, do not know if it is shown as some process in those programs above.

I would think there might be a risk of losing cached data.

Yes, but I each time have problems with it. It mostly takes a long time to safely remove a drive.

Many thanks again

 

Does that interrupt downloads? Or other processes? I would try it next time.

 

I haven't used ThisIsMyFile (pictured in your screenshot), but I have used the similar Unlocker (by Cedrick 'Nitch' Collomb) and found that it sometimes does not detect open file handles that lock a file or keep an external drive from being released.

Usually I have better luck with Sysinternals Process Explorer by doing a simple Search/Find (Ctrl+F) for the drive letter of the external drive in question (e.g. "H:\" without the quotes). This should display all open file handles for the drive, with the Process, PID, File Type, and Name for each handle (including file handles not detected by Unlocker). Usually the file handles can be then be removed by closing the relevant file(s) or program(s), thus freeing the external drive for removal. However, I have occasionally found handles not properly released by Windows Explorer (or some other program), and properly releasing the handles might require closing and reopening Explorer or other offending program.

...Or, as TV2 already pointed out, if you're sure the file handle is not in use, you can simply unplug the drive.

...Or you're sure the file handle is not in use you can use Process Explorer to force the handle(s) to close (click on the handle in the Search window, which will highlight the same handle in the lower pane of Process Explorer; then right-click on the highlighted handle in the lower pane & select 'Close Handle'), thus freeing the external drive for removal. (Process Explorer will caution you about potential system instability if the wrong handles are closed, but that usually isn't an issue in this situation.)

If you do decide to try Process Explorer and if your external drive is NTFS formatted, Process Explorer may also find a set of 4 handles such as the following (depending on drive letter):H:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$Txf
H:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxfLog.blf
H:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxfLogContainer00000000000000000001
H:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxfLogContainer00000000000000000002
These are system process handles that cannot be closed simply by closing a file or exiting a program. When I researched this a few years ago, it was difficult to find good information, and I had to sift through several sources (some inaccurate) to make sense out of it. By now, my own recollection also may not be accurate, but IIRC, these 4 handles are involved with the journaling function on NTFS formatted drives (i.e., you won't see them on a typical FAT32 formatted USB flash drive). They remain open even if you close other open programs or files, and AFAIK there is no way to gracefully close them to release the drive.

(IIRC, there is a way to disable the journaling function on the external NTFS drive, but I don't recall what it is, and my best recollection is that it didn't work when I tried it... ...But I don't completely trust my recollection on this: it may be that I just never got around to trying it... ...Or it might have been a drive letter dependent registry setting that I decided wasn't worth doing until/unless I settled on a permanent drive letter choice for certain external drives... ...Or???)

The important (and frustrating) point is that (AFAIK) there seems to be no graceful way to close these handles to release an external drive, short of shutting down the computer before removing the drive (...and AFAIK, ThisIsMyFile or Unlocker, or any other similar file unlocker will not even detect these handles, let alone close them.)

However, if these four ...$Extend\$RmMetadata\$Txf handles are the only open handles for the drive found by Process Explorer, then as long as the drive has not been recently used by anything that might activate the journaling function, the handles can be closed in Process Explorer to free the drive, or you can just go ahead and unplug the drive. My own practice for my NTFS external drives is to verify these 4 are the only open handles found by Process Explorer, then simply leave the drive inactive for several minutes after concluding any active changes to files on the drive, then go ahead and unplug it. Not ideal, but seems to be the only option short of a system shutdown, and in theory (and in my experience) should produce no problems.

Edit: (...oops! *Redface Other posts since I started writing this may make parts of above redundant/irrelevant.)

 

Oops, sorry, didn't get a notification e-mail.

Yes, I have used Unlocker as well, was the same here, hasn't found such processes.

Yes, I do it as well:

Also with Process Hacker:

FreeCommander is closed but there are still shown some P: processes in Process Monitor:




How could I delete / close them?

In Process Explorer this is shown:




Looks somehow risky to close these handles.

And what if Windows is just accessing the drive / NTFS system or so?

Whoops! Yes, NTFS, the handles from the above screenshot.

Besides of shutting down the Notebook, very enconvenient.

Yes, they do not show them.

But what if Windows scans / rebuilds or whatever that NTFS?

Yes, I had often plugged off a drive, though, but...

No, no, very useful information, many thanks.

 

This solved my problems with disconnecting drive(s) Enable or Disable Disk Write Caching in Windows 10

Might work for you?

 

Many thanks. Unfortunately it doesn't. That option is enabled since a long time because of this reason, but it doesn't help at all.

 

Try the "Disable" option. Sorry if I was misleading.

 

No, no, you weren't at all, I understood, I had set it lilke this:

 

What I meant by "if you are sure there is nothing being written to the drive" is actually very simplistic.
It just means that if YOU know that you are not writing anything to the drive, moving or copying anything from the drive, or doing any other file operation with the drive, and you know that anything you were doing is finished - then it is usually OK to unplug the drive.

Here is another exception I should mention: If you have deleted anything off an external drive while it was connected, it is very important to empty the Recycle Bin before unplugging the drive. Not doing this can cause some problems with the drive going forward, including the kind of problem here.

 

And Win services, processes accessing / modifying, writing, reading the NTFS on the external drive cannot be interrupted then?

Why is that?

So when the drive cannot be removed safely it might be caused by not emptying the bin?

Many thanks