Windows 10 cannot "Safe Eject" USB drive

   Hello,

 There is another solution that worked for me in windows 10.

First right click on the start menu icon.then open disk managment,find a disk you want to eject.
Right click on the disk name and in the options just click offline. Then go and safely remove the drive from the tool bar.

Open task manager performance tab & click on Resource Monitor on the bottom - might find what is using the usb drive.

I had the cant eject usb drive in use, it was a simple stand alone program,  core temp, running from the thumb drive.

The simplest way is as follows in Windows 10.

My laptop is an HP Laptop 15-bw0xx.

1. Go to Settings

2. look for the Find a Setting box

3. Insert Device Manager

4. Click on Portable Devices and your e-reader will appear

5. Right Click on Device (in my case Kobo)

6. Look for uninstall device

7. Click on this

8. Note the warning but uninstall anyway

9. Remove USB plug

REgards

Karen Stevens.

This is ridiculous...  If it knows it's in use when trying to remove, why not tell you what is using it and give you the option to kill those apps right then?  My normal fix is to use "process explorer" and find handles that use the drive letter, then kill those apps.  LibreOffice in particular seems to hold on to handles to any drive you open a document from until you kill it.  

However, recently process explorer has been reporting no handles for the drive letter I'm looking at and I still cannot eject it.

All,

This is a long standing problem that Microsoft refuses to address. The initial response by Antony is the poster child for Microsoft lack of value for its customers. His initial off the cuff response says...go away I have something better to do that to troubleshoot an issue.

It would be nice that these issues are actually solve and the solutions endorsed by Microsoft.

Joined the camp. It's a pain to do extra stuff when finished backing up my system with Windows 10.

Sysinternal's "Process Explorer" says it's explorer.exe that holds the handle to my USB hard drive. I'm on Win10 1709 and they haven't even fixed it. Must've been the spyware stuff they've added to Win10.

What worked for me is logging out and log back in, then I would be able to eject my USB hard drive.

It would be great if you were a bit more specific.

Which computer icon and found where?

Hi, Ken. 

When you say to click on the 'computer icon', to which icon, exactly, are you referring?

Thanks. :)

I am unable to "Safe Eject" my USB drive.

Windows 10 tells me it cannot eject because programs are using it.

I quit all programs and still it will not eject.

If I log out completely and then log back in it STILL will not eject.

I have to shut down the computer completely just to remove the USB drive.

Searches on the net and these groups come up with so many different people with so many different "solutions" yet there is no right solution as for every "solution" there are those that it still does not work for. It has been an issue that has gone on for years, and through several versions of Windows.

Is there a proper fix for this?

I, too, had this issue while working on my church laptop...my "work-around" is to click on the "computer icon".  It will open and show you what devices you have.  You should see your USB drive.  Right click and click "eject".  It will come up with the SAME wording BUT you'll see another option "continue"...click that and it will then eject your flash drive.

Ken Hardee

Yes this works for a flash drive but not for an external hard disk connected to USB port