Bug that prevents external hard drive from being ejected in Win10/Win11: Cause and how to fix it

Windows 10 and Windows 11 contain a bug that prevents you from removing an external hard drive (USB connection).

Recently, we received an inquiry from a user who was unable to safely remove a USB portable HDD.

After receiving your inquiry, we investigated the issue and discovered the cause, which we have now added as an "addendum" to our previous article.

Win11 Solved! Unable to safely remove hardware (USB)

This problem has been around for quite some time and no solution has been found.

This means that Microsoft doesn't recognize it as a bug either.

If you cannot remove the media from the HDD by "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" when there is no access to the drive and no files are open,Serious bugsThat's all I can say.

1.Task tray (notification area)Click the USB icon.

2. Click the name of the HDD you want to remove.

When I do this, the message "An error occurred while removing the USB mass storage device" appears and I am unable to remove it.

Some users say that if the removal policy is set to "Quick Remove (default)", it's fine to just unplug the USB.

Well, there's nothing we can do about it since Microsoft says it's not a problem.

However, the authorRun "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" and then ejectI recommend that.

If you directly remove the USB, there is a very high chance that your data will be lost if a bug like the one mentioned above exists.

Cause and how to find the bug that prevents external HDD from being ejected

Cause

The bug that prevents you from removing the external hard drive is caused by the "Distributed Link Tracking Client" service.

This service manages the links between NTFS volumes in a network or on a computer.

Distributed Link Tracking Overview(Microsoft)

By default, the "Distributed Link Tracking Client" service is set to run automatically when Windows starts.

If this service is set to run automatically, when you start Windows with an external hard drive connected, it will always be in use and you will not be able to remove it using "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media".

• After Windows starts, if you connect an external HDD while the service is running, you can remove it.
• If you stop the service while the external HDD is connected, you can remove it.
• If an external HDD is connected while the service is stopped, you will not be able to remove it when the service is started.

*If you are using your PC at home, it is fine to disable the "Distributed Link Tracking Client" service.

Disable the "Distributed Link Tracking Client" service

If you use network shares, disabling the "Distributed Link Tracking Client" service may cause shortcuts to shared files to become broken.

How to find it

Normally, if an error occurs during extraction, Event ID 225 (223) is recorded in the Event Viewer, allowing you to identify the problematic process (application name). However, in the case of this bug, the message displayed is "Application with Process ID 4: System," making it impossible to identify the process.

So how did I identify the problematic process? I used the Resource Monitor and Task Manager.

Identifying the problem process

1. Press Windows Key + R to open Run, type the following command and press Enter:

resmon

2. The "Resource Monitor" will open. In the input field to the right of "Associated Handles" on the "CPU" tab, enter the drive letter of the problematic HDD in half-width characters, followed by a colon (:).

You can check the drive letter by "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media".

For example, in the following image it would be "i:".

This will start searching for the associated handle and after a while the process name will be displayed below.

There are two processes shown in the image.

If you look under "Handle Name" you will see that you are accessing "i:".

Simply put, "svchost.exe" is a program that manages Windows services.

You can see that services are involved here.

Next, let's look at the PID.

Since both are the same "8092", we can see that they are the same service.

3. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc simultaneously, or right-click on an empty area of ​​the taskbar and click "Task Manager."

4.Task managerwill open, open the "Details" tab and check the PID you checked earlier.

If "PID" is not displayed

If "PID" is not displayed, right-click on the word "Name" and click "Select Columns."

Check "PID" and click OK.

5. Right-click on the process and click "View Services".

6.The "Services" tab will then open and the relevant service will be selected.

This will identify the problematic process (service).

In addition to the "Distributed Link Tracking Client" service, Windows 11 still has (even in 23H2) a bug that prevents you from removing USB memory sticks or external hard drives when the Task Manager is open.

New bug discovered in Windows 11 22H2: USB flash drives and other devices cannot be removed