Solved 'Safe to remove USB stick' pop up notification

Haydon said:

the block persists and I wonder why.

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System processes sometimes lock onto usb drives and hold them hostage. Signing out is not enough to release them. The only way to get whatever process to release them is a restart.
Others have mentioned that it is safe to remove if 'quick removal' is set in device properties of the drive. However, this is difficult to do when one uses a lot of different usb drives, many of which are generic and do not have static drive letters assigned to them. I agree that USB Safely Remove solves the problem.

I have used Usb Safely Remove for years. I bought it a long time ago when it was cheaper than it is now. My version has not been updated in years, but still works perfectly to force the system to release troublesome usb drives.

glasskuter said:

System processes sometimes lock onto usb drives and hold them hostage. Signing out is not enough to release them. The only way to get whatever process to release them is a restart.

Click to expand...

That makes perfect sense to me. It also appears to me a likely explanation why Macrium Reflect (which is a quite exacting app in terms of what it does and what it requires to do what it does) works better right after a restart, especially right after a change of backup medium (I rotate backup media)

So, restart it is (at least for me) I will mark this thread 'Solved'
Thanks to all who responded!

Quick Removal is on by default..., just pull the damn thing out already!



If you're not modifying or transferring any items on the Drive, it's perfectly safe to do so.
If scanning is taking place, it will stop.
If indexing is taking place, it will resume at another time.

For safe eject notification missing:
• Press keyboard "win + R"
• Type "regedit"
• Search the value "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Notifications\Settings\Microsoft.Ex plor er.Notification.{...}"

For me it was this name !
• If you REG_DWORD 0x00000001(0) set "0" you can double click on value. Set the value data to "1"
• Click "OK"

Chiming in here.

Defender scanning, and file managers not letting go of drives are the 2 main reasons I always use Safely Remove. I've lost plenty of things, and that Quick removal policy is *always* on for all my external drives - but Windows is not always doing what it says it is doing, so I play it safe.

@Haydon - 99% of the time when I get the same thing you're getting, it's an app somewhere that is access the drive for whatever stupid reason. Since I use 3rd party file managers, for me it is almost always one of them getting in the way. Every so often, though, it is Defender scanning something as a part of a Real Time scan.