I am having trouble with the time-honored problem of ejecting 2 external hard drives (Seagate). Windows tells me that both of them have files in use. Handle shows me the following:
PS blarg> handle64.exe -a -nobanner E:\
System pid: 4 type: File 45C0: E:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxfLogContainer00000000000000000001
System pid: 4 type: File 4B30: E:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$Txf
System pid: 4 type: File C77C: E:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxfLog.blf
System pid: 4 type: File CF2C: E:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\$TxfLog\$TxfLogContainer00000000000000000002
svchost.exe pid: 5584 type: File 270: E:\$Extend\$ObjId:$O:$INDEX_ALLOCATION
svchost.exe pid: 5584 type: File 29C: E:\System Volume Information\tracking.log
PS blarg> handle64.exe -a -nobanner I:
System pid: 4 type: File 488: I:$Extend$RmMetadata$TxfLog$TxfLog.blf
System pid: 4 type: File B8D4: I:$Extend$RmMetadata$TxfLog$TxfLogContainer00000000000000000002
System pid: 4 type: File C2A8: I:$Extend$RmMetadata$Txf
System pid: 4 type: File D19C: I:$Extend$RmMetadata$TxfLog$TxfLogContainer00000000000000000001
svchost.exe pid: 5584 type: File 1D0: I:$Extend$ObjId:$O:$INDEX_ALLOCATION
svchost.exe pid: 5584 type: File 2B4: I:\System Volume Information\tracking.log
Obviously shutting down the machine works but is annoying. I've tried closing everything in my system tray and turning off Windows Defender. I've tried looking for updated drive firmware but there doesn't seem to be any. Best I can tell the drives are not shared with the network. I've looked at various threads but there is a lot of noise. I've confirmed these drives aren't listed in my Start menu search indexable location. I'm in the process of turning off the checkbox Right Click -> General -> Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties, and we'll see if that matters...
I've noticed both of the drives have the following setting:
One forum post I found seemed to believe that with this setting, it makes sense that "Safely Remove Hardware" would give issues, since you don't need to use it with this setting. The answer would be to either use "Better Performance" & "Safely Remove..." OR use "Quick removal" & don't use "Safely Remove...". While that does sort of match the description above, that doesn't seem right to me. With my current setting, doesn't the failure message indicate that, despite the above setting, something is indeed using the drive?
Any ideas what that might be? It looks like some sort of system file system management process to me, but I haven't seen anything conclusive.
