Unable to eject USB drives due to Win Defender

mjohnsonn2 said:

Bring up Disk Management. Wait a few moments for it to populate.
You will see squares at the left of the screen that have labels such as "Disk 0," "Disk 1," etc. Each square indicates whether its associated disk is online or offline. More detailed info about the disks is to the right that you can use to easily identify the disk in question. Find the disk you are having trouble removing. Right click the square region at the left. In most cases, upon right clicking, you will see the word "offline" or "online." Click the word "offline" to take it offline. Click "online" to bring it back. Then use the icon in the notification area to eject.
The web has been SCREAMING for years about how to safely remove fool USB devices. There are a bazillion sites that say to do all sorts of ridiculous stuff that doesn't work. Sometimes Windows even gets confused and thinks a USB drive is a regular internal drive. Take the drive offline to free it up and put it back and eject it. That usually works. No muss no fuss.

Hmmm I see the word "Online" where you say, but if I Right click on the "Online" or anywhere on that same square area to the left of my USB drive (it's labled as Disk 1 in DiskMgmt), I get the following,
Convert to Dynamic Disk and Properties, the rest is grayed out but even the gray doesn't say anything Online or Offline. If I left click on it nothing happens, I tried several times both single and double click.
If I Right click on the same USB Disk in the Upper display of DiskMgmt I get the following,
Open, Explore, Delete Volume, Shrink Volume.

I've never had any trouble getting my USB to give the Safely Eject under windows until about March or April of this year (2021). So guess I was lucky until then. However so far I'm able to force close the locking process with 3rd Party App. Would be nice if I could find a way to make windows let go of the drive though.

but even the gray doesn't say anything Online or Offline.

Sorry I didn't notice you have Windows Home. Offline/online will work for all who have Windows Pro--which you and every Home user should switch to IMO.

This failure-to-eject problem has been around forever and toggling the drive offline and online will fix it. Unfortunatley, nothing can fix Windows Home edition.

mjohnsonn2 said:

Sorry I didn't notice you have Windows Home. Offline/online will work for all who have Windows Pro--which you and every Home user should switch to IMO.
This failure-to-eject problem has been around forever and toggling the drive offline and online will fix it. Unfortunatley, nothing can fix Windows Home edition.

Fascinating thread. I stumbled here after trying to work out this issue myself.

I have also had success with close "Task Manager". Other times its a Third-party search program called "Everything" that grabs hold of my external drive while it is plugged in and I use the program to do a search. Closing that program, then allows me to safely eject my drive through the correct method.

However, once Windows Defender grabs hold of it, basically closing every single program that I have open, I still can't get it to "Safely Eject". Next step is basically either just pulling the drive out of the USB port or restarting, which by then in my opinion is the same thing.

I feel that doing this ONLINE/OFFLINE via DM, is no different than just yanking the drive out physically, as if there is any chance the drive is being accessed [possible since we are getting the device is currently in use message], then either forcing it OFFLINE or just pulling it out when it may have been performing some operation, could potentially corrupt some data, which is the reason we want to eject safely in the first place right??

I feel that doing this ONLINE/OFFLINE via DM, is no different than just yanking the drive out physically, as if there is any chance the drive is being accessed [possible since we are getting the device is currently in use message], then either forcing it OFFLINE or just pulling it out when it may have been performing some operation, could potentially corrupt some data, which is the reason we want to eject safely in the first place right??

I did some searching for the offline/online functionality in Windows 10 Pro and couldn't find anything definitive. Perhaps someone with internal knowledge can reply here. My guess is that the ability to click an option to take the drive offline is there so that a drive can be gracefully removed. If not, then why would that clickable option be there at all if there's no difference from just physically yanking it? Also, notice that the hourglass indicates some processing is being done when taking a drive offline. Hopefully that's to ensure that any buffers/cache are flushed.

I've been doing it for quite a while now and so far haven't had any difficulties. Of course that isn't proof it's okay but I sure find it strange that the control to toggle a drive offline/online is there.

mjohnsonn2 said:

I did some searching for the offline/online functionality in Windows 10 Pro and couldn't find anything definitive. Perhaps someone with internal knowledge can reply here. My guess is that the ability to click an option to take the drive offline is there so that a drive can be gracefully removed. If not, then why would that clickable option be there at all if there's no difference from just physically yanking it? Also, notice that the hourglass indicates some processing is being done when taking a drive offline. Hopefully that's to ensure that any buffers/cache are flushed.
I've been doing it for quite a while now and so far haven't had any difficulties. Of course that isn't proof it's okay but I sure find it strange that the control to toggle a drive offline/online is there.

You make some valid points. I'll be doing some testing with this method [OFFLINE / ONLINE] and see how it all goes.

Thanks for your response.