USB drive is now becoming the most common storage media. It seems that the age of CDs and DVDs is coming to an end. When is the last time you have used any optical media to install a program, or for storage needs. Sometimes when you try to eject your USB drive, by right clicking the icon on the system tray, you get an error message that the drive is in use by some program. You may have closed all processes and programs that are running from the drive, but still you can get such an error.
This message comes for our own good and it prevents us from ejecting the drive when the drive is in use by some program. For example, if there is a data transfer going on between your USB drive and hard drive and if you eject the USB drive at that time then it is possible that data gets corrupted. Therefore this message warns the user that drive is being used by some process. But the problem is that Windows cannot recognize exactly which program is using the drive, so that you can close that program or process.
It is also possible that a program is not accessing the drive, but its a process that is running in the background. Such processes are hard to identify and close. How would you know which process is blocking the USB drive from ejecting?
Solution for “USB Device is in Use” Problem
Enter Dev Eject, a free windows based tool that lists all the removable devices and identifies applications that have locked down your drive from ejecting. It clearly lists all the program that are open from the drive and which process has them open. The interface of this program is clean and straightforward, no complicated stuff here.
The plus point or the main feature of this program is that it lists out the processes running from the drive, so that you can close the associated programs running that process. After closing that program, you can safely eject your drive.
Upon starting Dev Eject, it will present a list of all the connected devices via USB interface and also via SATA interface. Click on individual device from this list and you can then do tasks like eject the drive or you can click on “Locks” to know which process has locked the drive and is preventing from ejecting.
Once you know the program, just close it manually and if it is running in background then close it from “Task Manager”. You can also locate that process from Task Manager and clicking on “Processes” tab.
From “settings” section you can set Dev Eject to start with Windows, specify default click action on tray and device list, add tray integration and can configure more such options.
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