disable safely remove hardware icon

Edwin · 29 Aug 2016

pokeefe0001 said:

Which can easily be done by just not displaying it. I guess I don't see the problem.

Maybe they don't want it in the 'drawer' either.

todd24 · 30 Aug 2016

Edwin said:

As flash drives are configured for 'Quick Removal, by default, I think the OP simply wants to get rid of the icon using up 'real estate' in their system tray.

yes precisely.. my usb flashdrives are set to quick removal so there is no reason for the icon to be there...

Edwin said:

Save this as a .bat file and run it, you'll also need to put a copy of it in your Startup Folder or the icon will return every restart.

this is what happens... the icon appears in the notification area for a few seconds when i load into windows... then a pop-up screen appears on my desktop and disappears again after a few seconds... then the icon disappears as well.. so it works but its not a perfect solution i guess.. but thanks

bro67 · 30 Aug 2016

todd24, the whole reason of the Eject is to stop the write process, so that the sticks do not get corrupted or have a possible voltage short if the bus does not drop the 5 volts. Pulling them out before the OS is ready to release the Read or Write state, is just going to cause problems.

todd24 · 02 Sep 2016

it has never caused any problems for all the years ive been using usb sticks but the icon has always been annoying

im going to use the bat file work around but if anyone knows of a solution to get rid of the icon without using a bat file then please post in this thread or send me a pm

klepp0906 · 27 May 2017

anyone ever find a solution to this? I know it used to be possible in older versions of windows but i digress. Going to use the .bat myself as we speak for now ;p

ty for that!

Cerawy · 18 Sep 2017

klepp0906 said:

anyone ever find a solution to this? I know it used to be possible in older versions of windows but i digress. Going to use the .bat myself as we speak for now ;p

ty for that!

I'm also having this problem and found a better solution. Download this program. It will disable that annoying icon since windows doesn't give the option to do that. You also won't have to see that annoying window pop up on your desktop from the bat file everytime you start your computer. Still, I find it a bit silly that you need a program installed to fix it, so if anyone knows of a registry fix or something let me know.

bro67 said:

todd24, the whole reason of the Eject is to stop the write process, so that the sticks do not get corrupted or have a possible voltage short if the bus does not drop the 5 volts. Pulling them out before the OS is ready to release the Read or Write state, is just going to cause problems.

This is incorrect. There is no reason to use the safely remove hardware icon if the usb flashdrives are optimized for quick removal. Which is also what windows says as you can see on edwins screengrab.

treeducks · 15 Mar 2020

bro67 said:

No there is not. Just hide it like everyone else does.

No, 'NOT' everyone else. I want to removethis ridiculous icon as well.

When you hide an icon, it turns into an arrow.. it's not hidden, it just looks different. That's pretty messsed up if you think that's a response to getting rid of a notification icon that WE DO NOT WANT.

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Cerawy said:

I'm also having this problem and found a better solution. Download this program. It will disable that annoying icon since windows doesn't give the option to do that. You also won't have to see that annoying window pop up on your desktop from the bat file everytime you start your computer. Still, I find it a bit silly that you need a program installed to fix it, so if anyone knows of a registry fix or something let me know.

This is incorrect. There is no reason to use the safely remove hardware icon if the usb flashdrives are optimized for quick removal. Which is also what windows says as you can see on edwins screengrab.

THANK YOU FOR THAT FILE THAT REMOVED THE USELESS NOTIFICATION FROM MY TASK BAR.

pokeefe0001 · 15 Mar 2020

treeducks said:

When you hide an icon, it turns into an arrow.. it's not hidden, it just looks different. That's pretty messsed up if you think that's a response to getting rid of a notification icon that WE DO NOT WANT.

Well, that's not quite the way it works. If you hide an icon t gets added to the list of hidden icons and you get a caret sort of icon that will show the hidden list. If you have just one hidden icon then, yes, you haven't gained much. I have 8 or 9 hidden icons so it saves a bunch of space. And most of the those icons - including the Safely Remove icon - I occasionally use.

That "Safely Remove" is not just for USB thumb drives. It's also for things like external USB-attached hard drives that probably do use write buffers. You don't want to remove them without going through the Safely Remove process.

Berton · 11 Jul 2020

CTUCNY said:

Good luck, and I hope this helps!

Of course one could use File Explorer [renamed from Windows Explorer] and right-click the removable drive icon and choose Eject. Either way I prefer to not risk data loss/corruption by unplugging too soon/when not ready.