Windows can't stop your 'Generic volume' device

About 75% of the time when I try to disconnect my USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 external hard drive enclosures using "safely remove hardware" in my tray, I get this:

"Windows can't stop your 'Generic volume' device because a program is still using it. Close any programs that might be using the device, and then try again later."

"Unlocker" shows nothing is locking the drives. "What is locking this file" shows the following:

\Extend\$RmMetadata\TxfLog\TxfLogContainer00000000000000000001
\Extend\$RmMetadata\TxfLog\TxfLogContainer00000000000000000001
\Extend\$RmMetadata\TxfLog\TxfLog.bif

This is driving me nuts. It doesn't always happen but it happens often and I can't figure out why it sometimes does and sometimes doesn't. Every time I want to shut down my external enclosures, I have to go through this, and that means I have to shut off my entire PC so that I can shut off the enclosures safely without causing data loss. Why does Windows do this, even when nothing is using the files? Is there anything I can do to prevent this issue? I never had this issue with esata enclosures.

See USB drives won't eject

- Disable Indexing and System Restore for the externals
- Set Quick Removal in policies
- and a few more

read the thread for details

- I disabled indexing per drive properties - that made no difference, still can't eject disks.

- system restore is disabled on those drives.

- quick removal makes the drive perform slower, so that's a poor option.

I cannot believe that in 2015 we're still dealing with this ridiculous issue. Does Windows 10 fix this or do we have to wait until Windows 15 before they realize that people eject external storage drives?

I'm trying to force a dismount using fsutil but maybe I'm getting something wrong. It said in the other thread to use "fsutil volume dismount [DRIVE]". Here's what I typed: ("C:\>" is already there when I bring up my command prompt)

C:\> fsutil volume dismount [Z]

because it just gives me an error in the elevated command prompt :

"The system cannot find the path specified"

try the command as:

Code:

fsutil volume dismount Z:

GokAy said:

try the command as:

Code:

fsutil volume dismount Z:

Thanks, but I still can't eject the drives. The command seems to work (A couple drives seemed to disappear briefly then come back, 2 other drives didn't seem to do that), but I still can't eject my drives. They are still locked by the same process according to "what's locking my file".

Callender said:

Try disabling "Distributed Link Tracking Service"

Also try setting Write Caching to enabled for that USB drive.

Write-Caching - Enable or Disable

Also try registry setting to Disable Tracking of Broken Shortcut Links

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoResolveTrack"=dword:00000001

I disabled "Distributed Link Tracking Service"" - still can't eject.

I don't have the regitry key for ""NoResolveTrack"

But now I'm confused - 3 drives are set to "quick removal - default" and 1 drive is set to "better performance - default) with "enable write caching selected underneath. Isn't write caching risky because I could lose data? Should they all be set to quick removal?

Try HotSwap! - HotSwap!