How do I remove a USB Drive when Windows says it safe to do so?
So you plug in your USB drive to your PC, do your thing and then proceed to remove the USB device when Windows says it isnt safe to do so, Now, what do you do? Windows will recommend - via a dialog box - that you wait and try again, and that often works. But while you’re waiting, check your taskbar and system tray for programs that might be running files off the USB drive. Close any such programs.
In fact, close programs that were running files off that drive, even if you’ve already closed those files. Yep, including those open explorer windows that show contents of the USB drive.
Still no luck? Try Task Manager, using these steps:
1. Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete. If you’re using Vista, follow that by clicking Start Task Manager.
2. Click the Processes tab.
3. Examine the list of processes, looking for anything that could be from that drive–for instance, a process with a name similar to that of one of the files on the drive.
4. If you find such a process, select it, click the End Process button, and confirm your decision.
5. Try safely removing the drive again.
If Windows still won’t let you remove the drive, it’s time for desperate measures. Here are two of them:
1. You can shut down your PC, remove the device, and then reboot. It works, but it’s time consuming and annoying.
2. Or you could take a deep breath, cross your fingers, and just pull the stupid thing out. I know, I’m not supposed to tell you that. It’s bad advice. But I’ve done it more times than I’d care to admit, and it’s never backfired on me. Which isn’t to say I can guarantee that it won’t backfire on you–I can’t. And don’t even think about doing this if your external drive is NTFS-formatted (see the tip on the next page for a discussion of that issue).
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POSTED IN: Articles, How-To, Windows Tips, Windows Vista, Windows XP
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