How to Safely Remove USB from Windows 10 Device

How to Safely Remove USB from Windows 10 Device? How to Remove USB Drive Safely from Windows 1809 changes? Do you think the Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media is a painful option when you connect an external hard disk and want to unplug/remove it? Can we directly unplug the external HDD?  I don’t think you should do that.

How to Safely Remove USB from Windows 10 Device

How to Remove USB Drive Safely from Windows 1809 changes?

Windows 10 Technical Preview version also has the same painful “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media” way to remove your external hard disks safely. Have you already provided feedback to have some more EASY and user-friendly options to remove the external Hard Disk? If so, vote it up !!

How to Safely Remove USB from Windows 10 Device
How to Safely Remove USB from Windows 10 Device

I’ve already created a Feedback item on Windows 10 TP User Voice website, and the following is the link for my feedback item https://windows.uservoice.com! Moreover, Windows 10 technical Preview 9879, Safely Remove Hardware, and Eject Media icon broken !! So my guess is the Microsoft team is already working on this.

Patch My PC

When you go into “This PC” (replacement of My Computer) in Windows 10, you will be able to see the external HDD connected to that machine. However, when you right-click on the external HDD, there won’t be any eject option to unplug/remove the HDD safely (unlike USB).

Rather you need to go to the system tray and click on “Safely Remove Hardware or Eject Media” and select your external HDD, then eject it. How painful. You need to remember the name of the external hard disk 🙁

Windows 10 Safely Eject Media 1 Safely Remove USB
Safely Remove USB External Storage

We already have an EJECT option for USB drives connected to Windows 10 laptops or desktops. However, there is no option available for External Hard Disks. We’ve used the old “Safely Remove Hardware or Eject Media” option. If Microsoft can add these Safely remove or Eject options in the right-click menu, it would be very useful!!

See the below screen capture; there is no EJECT option for External HDD.

Adaptiva
Safely Eject Media 2
How to Safely Remove USB from Windows 10 Device

Resources

Windows 10 Latest Version Of Client Operating System From Microsoft (anoopcnair.com)

Author

Anoop is Microsoft MVP! He is a Solution Architect in enterprise client management with more than 20 years of experience (calculation done in 2021) in IT. He is a blogger, Speaker, and Local User Group HTMD Community leader. His main focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM 2012, Current Branch, and Intune. E writes about ConfigMgr, Windows 11, Windows 10, Azure AD, Microsoft Intune, Windows 365, AVD, etc…

13 thoughts on “How to Safely Remove USB from Windows 10 Device”

  1. the system tray “Eject Media” doesn’t always work on external USB drives. Half of the time, it responds: “Media is being used the system…please close application blah blah” …even though no application is using it. SO instead, I right-click on that USB device in the file explorer, and choose “eject.” This always works.
    BUT… since the latest Windows 10 update…there is no “eject” option for external drives in file explorer. So I have have to shut down the computer to disconnect the USB drive.

    I miss my Windows 7 🙁 It was reliable and nice-looking…compared to the flat,ugly, buggy Windows 10

    Reply
  2. I had the same issue and this solved it for me.

    Go to Settings > Devices > Connected devices. Find your external drive under “Other devices” and click on “Remove device”.

    Hope this helps!

    Reply
  3. HungerJames, this don’t solve the problem. Rosco Boxer maybe only the message is wrong, probrably your device don’t need to be ejeted before to be removed.

    Reply
  4. Don’t do that:
    “Go to Settings > Devices > Connected devices. Find your external drive under “Other devices” and click on “Remove device”. ”

    because your drive (and driver???) will be removed and won’t show up again when you plug it next time.
    Still trying to recover from that move… 🙁

    Reply
  5. On Windows 10 checking settings I found a default setting that indicates that you can remove the flash drive without ejecting it. That is why we can’t find the instructions.

    Reply
  6. The problem is when you remove an external hard disk in windows 10 not safely you cannot access it from Linux, a message says unable to mount disk.
    So I have to restart windows then shut the docking station. In this case I could access it from Linux.
    Any suggestion please

    Reply
  7. Yeah Windows 10 – say no more! Won’t take any older programs, can’r eject a HDD, takes ages to boot, nuisance ‘Search/Copy’ dialog, useless file system, expensive – $100+ only lets you install Windows 10 ONCE!! So if you wipe your HDD to partition it and need to replace the useless Windows 10 it costs you – PER COMPUTER! I’ll stick to my old computer and throw the new one – that I just bought – out. A simple solution to an insoluable problem.

    Reply

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