How to Eject a Drive Windows Says Is in Use

You clicked Eject and Windows answered that the device is currently in use. Something still has a file or folder open on the drive. Close it, and the drive ejects.

Close everything that touched the drive

Close every File Explorer window, especially any showing the drive's contents. Close any app that opened a file from the drive, such as a document, photo, or video, or that is still copying to it. Wait about ten seconds.

Eject from the taskbar icon

Click the Show hidden icons arrow in the taskbar corner, click the Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media icon, and pick the drive. Windows shows Safe To Remove Hardware when it is done.

Find the process holding it

If it still refuses, press Windows + R, type resmon, and press Enter. On the CPU tab, expand Associated Handles and type the drive letter, such as E:, in the search box. The list names the program holding a file. Close that program and eject again.

Restart File Explorer

Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager. Find Windows Explorer in the list, right-click it, and choose Restart. The taskbar disappears for a moment and comes back. Try ejecting again.

If Restart is not offered, right-click Windows Explorer, choose End task, then click Run new task, type explorer, and press Enter.

Sign out and back in

Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete and choose Sign out. This closes every program in your session. Sign back in and eject.

If you are in a hurry. Windows 11 uses the Quick removal policy for USB drives by default, which turns off write caching. Once the drive's activity light has stopped and no file is being copied, pulling it out is safe. Check the policy in Device Manager under Disk drives: right-click the drive, choose Properties, Policies.

If it happens every time. The "in use" message is usually the File Explorer preview pane, a thumbnail cache being built, or Windows Search indexing the drive. Close the preview pane with View, Show, Preview pane, wait ten seconds after closing everything, and try again.