Here’s a quick description of how you can use “Unlocker“,one of my favorite freeware programs, in order to safely remove a USB or external drive whenever Windows refuses to do it.
One of the things that I find most annoying about Windows is when I use the “Safely Remove Hardware” function to disconnect a flash or external drive and it doesn’t work. What bugs me more is when I am in a hurry and that happens (e.g. I want to grab my USB drive and rush off to catch the bus in time, and Windows announces that “the device … cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later”).
I don’t know what other people’s experience is, but I would say for myself that I get this more than 50% of the time, which is why I decided that I would write a posting on how to use Unlocker to work around this issue. Here are the steps (assuming you tried the ’safely remove hardware’ dialog and it didn’t work).
1. Download and install Unlocker if you don’t already have it.
2. Go to ’My Computer’, right click on the icon for the hard drive you want to disconnect, then click the ’ Unlocker’ entry in the context menu (see screenshot).
3. Once (and if) you get the ’Unlocker’ dialog with the locking processes outlined, click on ’Unlock All’.
4. That’s it. Now go back to the “Safely remove hardware” dialog in the system tray and it should work as normal.
Although the process above works every time for me, I can imagine a situation where the drive might not be ready for removal for other reasons beside locking processes, so in theory it may not work 100% of the time.
I know what you mean. The same thing has happened to me on many occasions when I’ve finishing transferring music onto my iRiver. I’ll give this a go next time it happens.
we cannot put this blame totally on windows… we sometimes forget that we are running antivirus programs thans scans files in the background. sometimes we also forget that we allow indexing of files in services..
u can disable indexing files and folders.
I have used Unlocker for some time, but I didn’t know it could help with this problem as well. Thanks for the information!
I also want to thank you for this website. FreewareGenius has become one of my favorites. Keep up the great work!
What if?
What if the drive was removed in haste? Now none of our PC’s in the house recognize the USB flash deivce.
Vista or WINXP
Any suggestions?
There’s usually a good reason that WIndows says it cannot reject the device. It may be still writing to it in which case killing the process will mess up any files you may have been saving to the USB stick.
Patience is a virtue.
Patricia,
The USB drive is allocated a drive letter when inserted and sometimes if you mess up removal that drive letter continues to be assigned. Hence, when you try the same USB key in the same pc again, it isn’t recognised.
I’ve found it useful to
a) Load the problem key onto a laptop/other pc, use it a little, and then “correctly” eject the device. Putting it back into the original pc may shift the drive letter up one, but the key is then useable again.
b) Buy a second key, put that in your pc then eject correctly. Now insert the problem key and it often works. As long as you then close that original key properly, it seems to go back to having no problem.
May be worth a try, especially if you have data on your USB key. Good luck.
Really helpfull, thnaks
its fabulous
I personally use USB Safely Remove. But this is not freeware. So your tip on using Unlocker to remove the drive really helps
Of course since I’ve paid, I am entitled to a free upgrade of USB Safely Remove… so… uh… :-/
Unlocker is great utility BUT it should not be used as the initial means of freeing up any file or USB device. As previoulsy stated you can ruin files or even loose the functionality of your USB device on your computer if it is improperly disconnected from your computer before some functions are finished with it. These functions maybe Antivirus, Indexing, or other scanners that you may have installed. Many people don’t realize that their photo/graphics/music programs also scan for files as soon as any media (CD,DVD, Flash drive, etc.) is inserted in the computer.
Having Windows Explorer open while a USB/flash drive is inserted may also hang up the removal.
I have found that 3 practices work for me:1) Close all open programs that could be accessing the USB drive. 2)Don’t just pull out the Flash/USB Drive…use the “Safely Remove Hardware” wizard and 3) Be patient. Wait and try again later.
good article thank you
I just pull out the USB device after closing all the files. I dont use the “safely remove hardware” option. I am using this method for the past 3 years without any problem.
But ENSURE that all files are closed.
I just saved a file to my thumb drive, and tried to eject it. It gave me the “unable” message, so I tried the unlocker, and it still gave me the same “unable” message when I tried to eject.
So I then closed the Word document that was still open, that I had saved to that drive, and tried it again, and it ejected just fine. That leads me to believe that all the times I had gotten this annoying message, it was because I still had a file open, that was now slated to that drive. Try closing the files that were most recently saved to your thumb drive, and I’ll wager the “unable” message will no longer plague you.
Some people here say that we can not blame Windows that the device can’t be stopped, or that there’s a good reason it can’t be stopped.
OK, fair enough, but if it can detect that the device is locked, please at least show me like Unlocker (sometimes) can do, what process is locking the device.
Thanks for the tip. I’ve used Unlocker before, but never tried it on USB devices. Although I’ve tried it now, and it says nothing is locking my device. So no solution now
.
And my file-copy-window has disappeared 15 min. ago, and no write activity on my USB hard drive.
So, maybe a good reason, but please Microsoft tell me the reason.
Hi Samer
I have been reading your content for quite sometime now. Just tried to test unlocker to eject a persistently non-ejectible flash drive! It worked
Thanks man!
This morning, the computer wouldn’t release my USB drive, even after I let it sit for over an hour and closed all applications. It’s not always a case of “the user didn’t realise that a file was still open”!
Eventually I killed and restarted explorer.exe, which fixed the problem. I didn’t try Unlocker, even though I have it, but I suspect that it would have told me that Explorer was the culprit.
I did, however, see some indications that the IMAPI service was involved…
My computer did not give me the un lock option. Now what?
the only safe way that I know that I can disconnect my drive when windows won’t let me and not lose or damage files is to
shutdown the computer.
Doesn’t work for me. Unlocker says “No locking handle found.” The problem is not that there is a process using the USB drive. The problem is that my WinXP ALWAYS says there is a process using the USB drive, whether there is or isn’t.
Right click on the taskbar, click task manager, click Processes tab, select explorer.exe then click end process. After that go to Applications tab, click New Task.. button, type explorer.exe and click ok then now try eject your usb
Comment by guest #20 above works. Thank you!