Symptoms : USB drive works but does not appear in ‘Safely Remove hardware’ in Windows vista/Windows 7
- USB drive works fine and we can see the device in ‘My Computer’
- USB drive is displayed in ‘Disk drives’ under device manager
- But either ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ icon is missing from task bar or right click on the ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ icon does not show any option to remove USB device safely or ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ is not working fine
Solution: Windows Vista/7 does not need clicking on the ‘Safely Remove hardware’ anymore, every time you unplug the device unless OS default setting is changed. In Vista or windows 7, USB drives use ‘Quick removal’ option where internal hardware uses ‘Better performance’ and enables write caching in Windows. To check which option is enabled for your USB drive, perform below steps:
- With USB drive plugged in, right click on ‘My computer’ icon and click on Properties
- On the Properties tab, select ‘Device Manager’ on the left hand sidebar
- Locate ‘Disk drives’ and expand it on the ‘Device Manager’ popup
- Right click on the USB drive and select Properties
- Under ‘Policies’ tab, there will be two option with ‘Quick Removal’ option selected
If you want ‘Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media’ icon with safely eject option, select the option ‘Better performance’ and restart the system. But Windows vista/7 does not need safely remove option for USB drives anymore, make sure you have closed all open windows pointing to your USB drive before removing it. To remove the USB, first close all windows pointing to it and wait few seconds for the device to finish writing data. Also try to use same port every time you plug in USB and don’t be hasty to unplug the device. It may cause hardware issue.
If you have any issue related to USB drive/hardware, please let us know. We will try to provide you the best solution.
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Hi Team,
I’ve Gigabyte H410 MH motherboard for Intel core i5 10400F. I’ve 3 USB 3.0 ports (one front & 2 back) and 6 USB 2.0 ports (2 front & 4 back).When I connect USB drive to USB 2.0 ports (both front and back), the windows notification sound do not come for connect and disconnect USB drive. Also, when connected to USB 2.0 ports, the USB drive is not shown in Windows safely remove hardware option. Everything works fine with USB 3.0 ports. For your information, I’ve already updated drivers and motherboard BIOS version. What do you suggest? Is there an issue in motherboard?Many
Thanks,
Manish Bane
Thank you for your tutorial
Wow, it solves my problem. Thank you very much. I was having trouble because my hard disk was once damaged and exchanged for a new one. Thank you very much.
Thanks a lot. This works.
In Windows 8, we can see safely remove option again
Thank you SEOinUS for your nice comment 🙂
Thanks you very much for this tutorial.