Handy Win10 USB Eject Tool
Lord knows, Win10 has occasional gotchas and weirdnesses. Browsing TenForums, I noticed an interesting discussion on ejecting USB drives. Users may click the toolbar item labeled “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media” at their discretion. But apparently, it doesn’t always produce the “Safe to Remove Hardware” notification shown below. Though there are ways that sometimes work to restore notifications — see this TF thread for discussion — this doesn’t always work for all users. That’s when this handy Win10 USB eject tool comes in handy. It’s free from Quick and Easy Software and it’s called USB Disk Ejector.
When notifications work as they should, this is what Win10 shows when you use its built-in Safe to Remove utility.
Why Use a Handy Win10 USB Eject Tool Instead?
When the confirmation message fails to appear, there’s a certain amount of trepidation as to whether or not it really IS safe to remove the selected USB (or removable media) item. And because some users can’t fix the notification issue using Settings or underlying registry keys, an alternative makes sense. USB Disk Ejector is one such alternative. It pops up in the lower right-hand corner of the display (in the same place as Taskbar notifications). It lets you interact with USB and removable media devices directly. And when a device is ejected or removed, it changes the display to reflect that change in status immediately.
With something to eject, USB Disk Ejector lets you pick an item from its interface.
Once ejected, the device entry is removed from USB Disk Eject’s list of devices.
In my book, this is a useful little utility that can help some users work around a minor Win10 gotcha. Use it if you need it, but feel free to skip it if you don’t. In my recent experience, USB Disk Eject is quick and easy to use, entirely portable (runs just fine from a UFD), and even works from the command line. Best of all, if its developers have things right the tool succeeds in ejecting disks even when the built-in facility fails in that job. Oh, and it’s Open Source, too (code available from GitHub).
[Note: Thanks to long-time TenForums Pro User Callendar for bringing this excellent utility to my attention. Always glad to find cool tools!]