Is it safe to disconnect usb hdd in this situation

The usb settings are set for fast removal but just to be sure nothing goes wrong,I still use the safely remove hardware feature
But the thing is,the "safely remove hardware" almost always fails even if the hdd is already spin down,says that something is using it
When I try to use the safely remove hardware,it actually wakes up the usb hdd and then I get a message that is used

The question is,if the hdd spin down,is it safe to disconnect it if it's set for fast removal
Is something kept in memory or something until I actually successfully eject it(windows says that the hdd is in use while the hdd is in idle mode(not rotating the disc)

I very, very rarely use an external HDD any more but back when I did, if safely remove didn't disconnect the handle the system had on the drive, I would always restart explorer or restart the system before unplugging it. I may have been wrong and it might have all been unnecessary but it made me feel safer before unplugging.

To make restarting explorer easier, I made a shortcut to C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c taskkill /im explorer.exe /f & start explorer.exe
named it Kill Explorer and kept it on my desktop.

I remove an external drive when the light is off. Does the light on yours stay on?

Jacee said:

I remove an external drive when the light is off. Does the light on yours stay on?

Click to expand...

No,it blinks when I read\write something to\from it and stays always on when the drive is spinning
When it spins down,the light turns off

I wouldn't risk removing while light is blinking. If "fast removal" isn't working, try not using it and see what happens.

Indexing may be locking up your external USB drive.

I have 3 desktop PC's and one of them (funnily enough, the newest of the 3) always has trouble with safely removing external USB drives. After about 5 or 10 seconds I get the infamous "Windows can't stop your (device name) because a program is still using it" message.

It's an Orico brand USB3 external dock but the brand isn't the issue because the same thing happens with a couple of other external docks that I've tried.

Just happens for SSD's and HD's with the external dock. USB sticks plugged into the PC's USB ports have no problem. I've been using a little program called USB Disk Ejector for some time but even that has trouble with safely removing the drives. Restarting Explorer as per glasskuter's post also doesn't work for this particular PC. I've also had Indexing (Windows Search) disabled in Services since I reinstalled Windows 11 on this PC earlier this year.

Now I just wait to make sure the activity light isn't blinking on the dock and then I turn it off and remove the drive. No problems with doing that so far.

You can use Sysinternals Process Explorer > Find > File Handle or DLL, enter the drive letter (such as F:), and see what's using it.

I NEVER use the utility to eject media. I eject USB flash drives and HDDs at least 10 times a day every day and just yank them out. have been doing this for years and have never lost a byte of data.

Banjoman301 said:

You can use Sysinternals Process Explorer > Find > File Handle or DLL, enter the drive letter (such as F:), and see what's using it.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I've just tried that.

Came up with "No matching items" (and the drive still won't safely eject with the infamous Windows message).

This is a Gigabyte B760 DS3H AX DDR4 motherboard from 2022 with an Intel 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-12400F 2.50 GHz CPU and 32 GB RAM.

As I said, the other 2 PC's are fine, and one of them is an "unsupported" ASUS H81M-PLUS motherboard with a 4th Generation Intel CPU from 2013 or 14.

Weird.

Did you include the : after the drive letter?

Run Process Explorer as Administrator?

Ah, thanks - yep, I did include the : but I wasn't running as Administrator. Now I get a result.

I've been reading up on this and with everyone else who has this problem it's usually "System" that has a hold of the drive for some reason.

I'll just continue turning it off when the dock light isn't flashing.

The $TxfLog files can lock a drive removal...

Run box > resmon > CPU > Associated Handles

Right-click the process(es) and select End Process