Fix: Cant Eject External Hard Drive on Windows

Windows Troubleshooting
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Originally published at: Fix: Cant Eject External Hard Drive on Windows

Some users have reported that they are not able to safely eject their external hard drive like USBs etc. This issue is often caused by other processes that are using the contents of the drive or Windows USB drivers which prevent the removal of the external drive. Users have reported that they cannot eject their…

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The same problem - its not working. Its doing exactly the same what You can do from eject context menu. And the results is also known - no f. eject.

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Thank you so much ! This is the only solution that I tried that allowed me to safely remove my hard drive

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That didn’t work for me. I got a message that WD my passport external drive was an unremovable drive after running that command.

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Thank you for your suggestion and input, we will add this to article shortly.

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no eject option…there is never an eject option. I have found NO fix for this!

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Joe is right… i figured it out on my own but this is correct
Device Manager → Disk Drives. Check the configuration of each device
under disk drives. Under one of the options, we found that we could
select between “quick removal” and “performance”.
choose performance. You need to shut down and power back up for the
selection to take effect. In our case, we can now “eject” the externa

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Update your Universal Serial Bus Controllers drivers and check if it shows up

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Completely useless advice when there is no ‘eject’ option.

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Doesn’t work!!!

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That’s odd but you might be able to safely remove your external USB drive by doing the following steps:-

  1. Press and hold the “Windows + R” key to open Run
  2. Once run is opened type this command and press enter

“RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll”

Now select the device and press Stop.

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Same here. I’ve updated all Universal Serial Bus controllers and still nothing.

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Option 2: under Troubleshoot there is no Hardware and Devices option. I’ve researched this and others say it is missing too. Nothing I do will eject my External HD. Nothing.

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It should be there if it is indeed an external hard drive.

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Okay then, Fully turn off your computer and simply unplug the drive.

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Try the “Solution 2” if that doesn’t work for you simply turn off your computer and remove the hard drive physically their won’t be any issues if you will do it that way.

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It’s known bug for very long time and I see even Windows 10 is not resolving it. I had it in Windows XP, in Windows 7, and now in Windows 10. Above advices are only mere workarounds, not solutions. Even tools which has feature to check what is using hdd show that hdd is not use by any software. Still Windows won’t let You eject such drive.

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There is no eject option for this drive in disk management on my computer. Running command prompt and typing sfc /scannow was the thing that permanently fixed the problem on my computer. Solution #3 was the one that gave me the message I had an unremovable drive.

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Have you tried Solution 3?

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Try this method:-

  1. Press and hold the “Windows + R” key to open Run
  2. Once run is opened type this command and press enter

“RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll”

Now select the device and press Stop.