Strange phenomenon ejecting (or trying to) USB drives


I have a dual bay external M.2's formatted in NTFS connected via 10gbps Type C. And I have the same issues ejecting now that I'm on 24H2 but no issues on 22H2. lol
 

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jseeley said:
I have a dual bay external M.2's formatted in NTFS connected via 10gbps Type C. And I have the same issues ejecting now that I'm on 24H2 but no issues on 22H2. lol
Click to expand...
Hmm... I have two M.2 drives in external enclosures that are on the same type of connection, I've had no issues ejecting those after I do the backups. I'm thinking you have something that is accessing the disks after they are mounted perhaps running in the background.

I suspect that Sysinternals must have something that will help.
 

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ExFat has no indexing like NTFS. That's where the issue lies probably. I did use the Resource Monitor and showed no handlers on the NTFS thumb drive that I could not eject. I may look into that. Could it be setting I disabled? I can read and write to NTFS fine. Just can't eject.

On your external NTFS drives, I'm curious if you have a recycle bin on those drives that deleted files from the drives go into -or- when you delete something from the drive, it's instantly deleted? Probably doesn't matter anyway.
 

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Win11Pro - 22H2-2621.1555i7-1270032 GB DDR5RTX 3060
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Win11Pro - 22H2-2621.1555
Computer type
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Manufacturer/Model
Lenovo Legion T5 26IAB7
CPU
i7-12700
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32 GB DDR5
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RTX 3060
I formatted a 32GB FLASH drive as NTFS and wrote about 20 MP3 files to it. I then ejected it, no problem at all. I repeated the test with FAT32, then with exFAT, the results are below. Looks like for general use, you might be best with FAT32.

For whatever reason, the FAT32 format has much faster writes on this USB FLASH drive. Oddly, NTFS and exFAT has lousy write performance, FAT32 did four times the write speeds.

USB FLASH exFAT Format.webpUSB FLASH FAT32 Format.webpUSB FLASH NTFS Format.webp
 

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  • At a glance

    Win 11 Pro 25H2, Build 26200.8737Intel Core i5 1450064GB DDR4GeForce RTX 4060
    OS
    Win 11 Pro 25H2, Build 26200.8737
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Home Brew
    CPU
    Intel Core i5 14500
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte B760M G P WIFI
    Memory
    64GB DDR4
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce RTX 4060
    Sound Card
    Chipset Realtek
    Monitor(s) Displays
    LG 45" Ultragear, Acer 24" 1080p
    Screen Resolution
    5120x1440, 1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Crucial P310 2TB 2280 PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD (O/S)
    Silicon Power 2TB US75 NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 2280 SSD (backup)
    Crucial BX500 2TB 3D NAND (2nd backup)
    Seagate 4TB Ironwolf, rotating HDD archive files
    External off-line backup Drives: 2 NVMe 4TB drives in external enclosures
    PSU
    Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 750W
    Case
    LIAN LI LANCOOL 216 E-ATX PC Case
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    Lots of fans!
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    Manufacturer/Model
    Home Brew
    CPU
    Intel Core i5 14400
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte B760M DS3H AX
    Memory
    32GB DDR5
    Graphics card(s)
    Intel 700 Embedded GPU
    Sound Card
    Realtek Embedded
    Monitor(s) Displays
    27" HP 1080p
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Crucial P310 2TB 2280 PCIe Gen4 eD NAND PCIe SSD
    Samsung EVO 990 2TB NVMe Gen4 SSD
    Samsung 2TB SATA SSD
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    Thermaltake Smart BM3 650W
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    Okinos Micro ATX Case
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    Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000
    Mouse
    Logitech G305
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  • Nimo N171 17" Laptop, (Intel i3-1215U, 16GB RAM, 2TB NVMe, Win11 Pro)
    Acemagic Vista Mini PC V1 (Intel N150, 16GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, Win11 Pro)
    HP ENVY h8-1540t, (24GB RAM, 2TB SSD, 2TB HDD, Win11 Pro)
Awesome. Thank you. I went back to NTFS on my thumb drive to run Sysinternals Process Explorer. Both Win11 builds turned up exactly the same system handlers even though I can eject NTFS fine on 22H2 but not 24H2. StrangeGoodPE.webp
 

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Win11Pro - 22H2-2621.1555i7-1270032 GB DDR5RTX 3060
OS
Win11Pro - 22H2-2621.1555
Computer type
PC/Desktop
Manufacturer/Model
Lenovo Legion T5 26IAB7
CPU
i7-12700
Memory
32 GB DDR5
Graphics Card(s)
RTX 3060
What's interesting is, as I mentioned before, I'm able to eject my NTFS formatted removable drive in the first 90 seconds after bootup, but not after that.
 

My Computer My Computer

At a glance

Win11Pro - 22H2-2621.1555i7-1270032 GB DDR5RTX 3060
OS
Win11Pro - 22H2-2621.1555
Computer type
PC/Desktop
Manufacturer/Model
Lenovo Legion T5 26IAB7
CPU
i7-12700
Memory
32 GB DDR5
Graphics Card(s)
RTX 3060
jseeley said:
What's interesting is, as I mentioned before, I'm able to eject my NTFS formatted removable drive in the first 90 seconds after bootup, but not after that.
Click to expand...
I have to believe some process is opening the drive and locking it from being able to eject. That's really the reason that a drive will be unable to be ejected. I'd suspect something you've added since I have no problem ejecting a USB NTFS drive hours or even the next day after it was connected.
 

My Computers My Computers

System One System Two Other systems

  • At a glance

    Win 11 Pro 25H2, Build 26200.8737Intel Core i5 1450064GB DDR4GeForce RTX 4060
    OS
    Win 11 Pro 25H2, Build 26200.8737
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Home Brew
    CPU
    Intel Core i5 14500
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte B760M G P WIFI
    Memory
    64GB DDR4
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce RTX 4060
    Sound Card
    Chipset Realtek
    Monitor(s) Displays
    LG 45" Ultragear, Acer 24" 1080p
    Screen Resolution
    5120x1440, 1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Crucial P310 2TB 2280 PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD (O/S)
    Silicon Power 2TB US75 NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 2280 SSD (backup)
    Crucial BX500 2TB 3D NAND (2nd backup)
    Seagate 4TB Ironwolf, rotating HDD archive files
    External off-line backup Drives: 2 NVMe 4TB drives in external enclosures
    PSU
    Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 750W
    Case
    LIAN LI LANCOOL 216 E-ATX PC Case
    Cooling
    Lots of fans!
    Keyboard
    Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000
    Mouse
    Logitech G305
    Internet Speed
    Verizon FiOS 1GB
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    Malware Bytes & Windows Defender Security

  • At a glance

    Win 11 Pro 25H2, Build 26200.8655Intel Core i5 1440032GB DDR5Intel 700 Embedded GPU
    Operating System
    Win 11 Pro 25H2, Build 26200.8655
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Home Brew
    CPU
    Intel Core i5 14400
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte B760M DS3H AX
    Memory
    32GB DDR5
    Graphics card(s)
    Intel 700 Embedded GPU
    Sound Card
    Realtek Embedded
    Monitor(s) Displays
    27" HP 1080p
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Crucial P310 2TB 2280 PCIe Gen4 eD NAND PCIe SSD
    Samsung EVO 990 2TB NVMe Gen4 SSD
    Samsung 2TB SATA SSD
    PSU
    Thermaltake Smart BM3 650W
    Case
    Okinos Micro ATX Case
    Cooling
    Fans
    Keyboard
    Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000
    Mouse
    Logitech G305
    Internet Speed
    Verizon FiOS 1GB
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    Malware Bytes & Windows Defender Security
  • Nimo N171 17" Laptop, (Intel i3-1215U, 16GB RAM, 2TB NVMe, Win11 Pro)
    Acemagic Vista Mini PC V1 (Intel N150, 16GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, Win11 Pro)
    HP ENVY h8-1540t, (24GB RAM, 2TB SSD, 2TB HDD, Win11 Pro)
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