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Accepted
Arnold Spence
Asked: 2009-05-01 08:47:51 +0800 CST

Is there a quick way to safely remove a USB flash drive under Windows?

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USB flash drives are an essential tool for any admin but I find the process of safely removing a flash drive under Windows to be inconvenient (click the tray icon, find your drive in the too-much-information USB bus tree, click stop, etc...). I know that most times you can just pull the drive out but I never feel comfortable doing that.

Is there something better than what windows provides for safe removal?

windows usb-flash-drive

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If you know the drive letter, you can single-left click on the Safely Remove Hardware tray icon, then just click the drive you want to remove.

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  2. On Vista, you can right click on the drive itself in My Computer and select "Safety Remove Hardware"

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  3. I use a little utility called RemoveDrive that allows me to add 'Eject USB' to my backup script. Saves two clicks per day!

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  4. you do a shortcut to:

    RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

    And then you set an hotkey for that, like ctrl+alt+R

    hotkey = remove hardware

    fast&easy

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  5. I found this post a while back about a free tool you can use, or bundle via command line with other apps. Single click eject, and drop the eject button in your task bar. https://www.getusb.info/eject-usb-flash-drive-from-windows-command-prompt-any-version/

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  6. Just remove it. I have never safely removed anything for a decade. I just yank the sucker out. No kittens have died.

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