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I have several USB device which are always connected to my PC, they appear on the devices I can eject on the task bar but I never want to eject them.

These could be USB hubs, external HDDs I work off, network adapters, etc.

Sometimes however I do need to eject a temporarily connected device like a USB flash drive or card reader. I will often click the wrong device on the list and eject something "essential" like my network adapter. I will then need to manually reinsert the device or restart my PC.

Is there a way to hide some devices from the Eject List, lock them from being ejected or provide some confirmation before ejection?

JohnoBoy
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1 Answers1

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You may use a Safely Remove alternative product. Unfortunately the ones I know are commercial with exorbitant fees :

A solution that uses Windows mechanisms is to mount the device as a subfolder and remove its drive-letter, done this way :

  1. Create a new folder on permanently mounted NTFS formatted disk, for example C:\Drives.

  2. Open Computer Management, then select Disk Management.

  3. Right-click on the volume you wish to hide and select "Change Drive Letters and Paths"

  4. Use the Add... button to add a mount path using the folder you just created (e.g. C:\Drives\USB1)

  5. Right-click on the volume and select again "Change Drive Letters and Paths"

  6. Remove the assigned drive letter leaving just the mounted path.

Windows will no longer show this volume in Explorer or in Safely Remove. All references to the drive should be via that folder.

The downside to this is that the default write policy for removable drives, write-through (not cached), will no longer apply to the device. You should be careful after copying a large file to the drive to remove it only some time after the write is finished.

harrymc
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