Having issues ejecting an external hard drive on Windows 10? When removing a hard drive from your Windows, you have to remove it safely if you do not want your data to be corrupted or damaged. If you cannot eject the external hard drive safely or the option is greyed out, there can be some causes to this error, such as the hard drive still being used or outdated drivers.
Method 1. Restart or Turn Off Computer
While you can remove the external drive without using the eject option, there’s a chance of data loss. To remain on the safe side, you can restart your computer.
Once your computer restarts, you can eject your external hard drive or Pendrive. Or else, you can shut down your computer and eject the connected drive since shutting down closes all applications and third-party processes.
Method 2. Run Windows Hardware and Devices Troubleshooter
In case your external hard drive has some hardware issues, you can run Windows built-in free Hardware and Devices troubleshooter to detect and fix problems with connected devices and hardware to see if it can fix can’t eject external hard drive Windows 11/10 problem.
1. You can click Start -> Settings to open Windows Settings. Click Update & Security.
2. Next you can select Troubleshoot from the left pane, and scroll down to find Hardware and Devices category and click it.
3. Hit Run the troubleshooter button and Windows will automatically troubleshoot problems with connected devices and hardware.
Method 3. Update USB Drivers
If you frequently meet the error Can’t eject external hard drive Windows 11/10, then you should consider if your computer USB drivers are outdated or corrupted. To eliminate this cause, you can follow the steps below to update USB drivers on Windows 11/10 computer.
1. First, click on the Windows 11/10 search and type in Device Manager. Next, open the Device Manager app from the list.
2. On the Device Manager, expand the Universal Serial Bus controllers section.
3. Right-click on every entry with a yellow exclamation mark and select Update driver.
That’s it! Now you will be asked to pick where you want Windows 11 to search for the driver or add your own. You must select the first one and follow the on-screen instructions to finish the driver update process.
Method 4. Use Task Manager to End Tasks in Windows 10
Since you don’t know for sure which program or process is using files on the external hard drive in the background, you can use Windows Task Manager to view and end all suspicious tasks on Windows 11/10 to see if it can fix can’t eject external hard drive Windows 11/10 error.
1. First of all, click on the Windows 11/10 search and type in Task Manager. Next, open the Task Manager app from the list.
2. On the Task Manager, you need to find the app that you suspect. Right-click the entire branch and select End Task.
That’s it! Repeat the steps to close every app that you feel is preventing the Windows 11/10 USB eject feature from functioning correctly.
Method 5. Eject External Hard Drive with Disk Management
If you can’t eject external hard drive Windows 11/10, you can try to use Windows Disk Management tool to eject the device.
1. Open Disk Management Windows 11/10. You can press Windows Keys + R, type diskmgmt.msc, and hit Enter to open this tool.
2. Scroll down to find the external hard drive you want to eject. Right-click it and click Offline.
Then you can safely eject the external hard drive from your Windows 10 computer. Need to mention that you need to enter into Disk Management again to set the external hard drive status Online so as to use it next time.
Method 6.Access the Safely Remove Hardware utility via CMD
Well, you can access the Safely Remove Hardware utility via CMD. This will open the Disk Management utility, where you can safely eject your external hard drive.
1. Click on Windows 11/10 search and type CMD. Right-click on the CMD and select ‘Run as administrator‘.
2. On the Command Prompt utility, execute the given command and hit Enter:
RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll
3. Now, you will see the safely remove hardware utility. Select the drive you want to eject and click on Stop.
That’s it! This is how you can safely remove a USB drive from Windows 11/10 via Command Prompt.
So, these are a few simple methods to fix can’t eject USB drive Windows 11/10. If you need more help safely ejecting a USB drive on Windows 11/10, let us know in the comments below. Also, if the article helped you, share it with your friends as well.
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