Problem Ejecting External Disk - This device is currently in use

Question

Hello,

After I connect my external disk to my HP Z4 G4 business desktop, I cannot safely remove / eject it anymore. Windows 11 says "Problem Ejecting USB Attached SCSI - This device is currently in use." Also after I click the safely remove button 100 times. It happens even right after I start my PC without doing anything else. The only way to properly disconnect the external disk seems to be to shut down the PC.

When I connect the external disk on another PC that runs Windows 10, I don't have the issue. Both PC's have Norton installed, so that doesn't seem to be the cause.

Is there a way to find out which process is preventing me from safely removing the disk?

Thanks in advance!

SJW

PS My external disk is a Sandisk Professional G-Drive 12 TB.

Answer 1

F***ed up that Windows / MS hasn't fixed this yet. Shutting down the computer seems inconvenient at best. I don't really want to add additional software to figure out what the problem is.

Answer 2

I had this issue. One problem I found. I am running the program called 'Folder Size', if I stop that from running I am able to eject a disk.

Answer 3

F***ed up that Windows / MS hasn't fixed this yet. Shutting down the computer seems inconvenient at best. I don't really want to add additional software to figure out what the problem is.

Yeah, it sucks big time this is STILL going on after all this time.

It happens almost all the time when I'm ejecting USB drives. Neither Process Explorer or Handle ever show anything actually attached to that drive. It's something I've battled over all versions of Windows. Here we are 2024 and it still happens a lot of the time.

Is this so hard to get right? Other operating system never have this much issues

Answer 4

In fact it seems to be worse than that. I have had the problems for close to two years, almost from day one of owning the brand new SF2.

The workaround used to be go to FE, right click the disk, select EJECT. Since about 4 months ago this does not work as the EJECT option is no longer there.

I had many long exchanges with MS support, reinstalled once or twice, and that is the advice they keep giving me. It does not help and I am not about to spend many hours reinstalling everything just to get back to square one.

The problem persists with external drives I have (three Seagate SlimBackup, one seagate 8gb disk, many USB keys.

Since the computer is still under warranty, I am seriously considering sending it back once I figure out how to function without it.

Answer 5

PS another workaround was the device manager. There also the eject option disappeared.