Windows 10: My USB HDDs will not safely remove.

I have three of them, which I rotate for backups. The incremental backup process itself takes about five minutes. Not always, but usually, when the backup is done, if I try to "safely remove", Windows pops up a box saying that the disk is in use, and that I need to close all programs which are accessing it.


But nothing SHOULD be accessing the disk. I've closed the backup and exited. The light on the disk and the disk activity light on the PC this is a desktop, BTW indicate that something is churning the disk.


I located and ran a program to identify what has files open in a folder. It identified Explorer. Just one time, I killed that. It turns out that this is not the File Explorer app which wasn't running anyway but the entire Windows user interface.


After a lot more searching, I found something suggesting turning off indexing of file contents. The problem went away for one backup, and then came back.


I've tried leaving it in the hopes that Windows will finish whatever it thinks it needs to run. Several hours later, nothing has changed.


I've tried shutting down. It says windows is shutting down and blacks the screen, but the disk keeps showing activity and the power light stays on on the PC. At this point, again, there is no user interface left. It ran for another hour or two. And that was after at least two or three hours hoping it would stop churning, before I issued the shutdown!


These disks were used for the same purpose on my old computer without this problem. It was running the same version of Windows 10. There were differences, though. The old one was brought to Windows 10 from Windows 7, several years ago. This one is a new install.


This is really intolerable. After I've done backup, I want to remove the disk and put it away. Usually I want to then shut down the PC and go to bed. I have no way of finding out what Windows is doing to my disk, and no way to interrupt that and close its file handles, short of killing the entire user interface.


I looked for questions about this, and found some. Locked, can't add to them. But the one I really looked at, someone was insisting that the proper solution is to shut down the computer, unplug the disk, and then reboot. That's not reasonable in any case, but especially not if it's going to take hours to completely shut down and stop accessing the disk.

:)

 

Ext USB HDD suddenly non-removable

Bree, The error is not that it can't be removed because it is busy, the error is that it is not a removable drive and can not be ejected or unplugged. Quite different errors.
As an experiment I plugged in another external USB HDD. Get the same error with it.

The safe removal icon is listed in Settings - Select icons to appear on the taskbar -- the safely remove icon is listed as ON.
The icon is not in the hidden icons area of the taskbar.

In the Device manager, both drives have: Quick Removal set; Safe Removal Required is true.

-- Larry

 

USB Safe Remove Icon missing

Thankyou for your prompt reply. Carried the step by step instructions as far as Item 5. Interestingly the Safe remove icon was turned on. Toggled the on/off button and left it in the off position then rebooted with the intention to clear anything that
may have prevented the icon showing up. With bootup complete the Safe remove icon is now visible in the Hidden icon box and is active when tested.

After bootup proceeded as per instruction No 5 to see if Safe remove icon button is in the ON position. NEGATIVE. It is in the OFF position and seemingly works fine.

Hi you won't normally see the safely remove icon unless there is a usb device attached. Then it should show up so you can safely remove the device. If you dont see it click the up symbol on right hand side of taskbar to see if it is hiding in the tray. The
minute you insert a usb device it should be visible to you. If you have already done step 3 and step 4 that is all you should need to do to have it pop up automatically when usb device is present. It will disappear when the device is removed. Normal behavior
for you. Hope that clarifies.

 

USB Drives plugged in but No Safely Remove Icon in Tray, and

....no drives listed in Hardware List.

When I plug USB drives in, the Safely Remove Hardware icon does not appear in in system tray (its not hidden either)

First, I went to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Select which Icons Appear on the Taskbar...





.. and found it was already on

Next I tried using the solution in this post...

Solved No safely remove icon in tray any more after Windows 10 Anniversary up - Windows 10 Forums

...making a shortcut from "rundll32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll", but when I run the shortcut, there are no devices listed...





(in this screenshot, you can see two USB drives in the Explorer window in the BG but nothing listed in the panel. )

NOTE: They are listed in Disk Management and in the Device Manager under Disk Drives, and they function just fine..
I think the Safely Remove Hardware icon is not appearing because despite being detected and showing in Explorer, Device Manager and Disk Management, its not being listed in this panel for some reason.


NOTE2: I recently installed a new motherboard.

ASUS B150M-A
CPU Intel Core i5 - 6500 (3.2 GHz)
Mem 4096 MB (DDR4 - 2133)

I am 100% sure it was working before that, but I cannot say for sure if it was still working after that.
A friend suggested that it might be a setting in BIOS, but I have looked through it and nothing stands out.

Any suggestions would be welcome.


ETA: this is not the system listed in my System Specs page. That is another computer which I still have.