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I just got myself an ORICO M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure USB-C Adapter and put an unused NVMe 1.3 into it (512GB). When I tried to eject it in the file explorer, there was no eject option, though the format option was there.

File explorer doesn't show eject option

Checking the tray, I did find it, but when I pressed eject, I got that it is still in use:

Eject showing in tray

Couldn't eject

Even after restarting the computer this still was the case. Not understanding why, I checked What's using this file?, which didn't show a thing as using it. So I went on to check the task manager, which oddly enough showed that there was some activity going on, even though this is an empty drive (just formatted it).

After the reboot, I also noticed that the drive now has a "$RECYCLE.BIN" folder. Does this mean that Windows thinks this is an internal drive? If so, does anyone know how I can use this as an independent drive to move between computers?

As a side note, I can read and write data, even getting GB/s rates. enter image description here

Tim Jager
  • 200

3 Answers3

17

There is likely nothing wrong with that SSD, nor is there any problem with the way Windows has mounted it.

  • Windows OS normally mounts small USB drives, e.g., flash "thumb" drive, without write caching to allow for quick ejection.
  • Large HDD and SSD drives, whether internal or external, are normally mounted with write caching, which speeds up writing to disk by buffering writes in RAM until they are completed. The disadvantage is that one must wait for all writing to complete before removing the drive, and for that reason, an eject button may not be displayed.

Change write caching

If you want to dismount the drive frequently, and you don't mind slowing write access, you can change the drive mount to remove caching.

  • In Explorer, right-click on the drive and select Properties.
  • On the Hardware tab, select Properties (again).
  • Click the Change settings button.
  • On the Policies tab, remove the check from *Enable write caching on the device". The SSD should now be able to be ejected as would a flash drive.

On the other hand, one can use a third-party tool to safely eject even a drive mounted with write caching. Free HotSwap! and many alternatives can be used, and I find them more reliable.

As for the $RECYCLE.BIN file, yes, this is normal, since it allows for temporary "deletion" of files by moving them to the Recycle Bin. That is usually an advantage of having a large external HDD, but if you don't want to use it, you can set the policy for that drive to "Do not move deleted files to the Recycle Bin".

  • Right-click the Recycle Bin.
  • Select the drive letter for the external SSD.
  • Select "Don't move files to the Recycle Bin..."
Glorfindel
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DrMoishe Pippik
  • 37,887
2

This has been an annoyance ever since "safely remove" feature was introduced. From my experience you have two ways to deal with it -

  1. Ignore the warning message and unplug device, as long as you are not interrupting any writing operations to the device. That means closing whatever contents/apps you know might be writing, and turn off write caching in the device Property tab.

  2. Track down all open handles referencing the drive and close them manually (either by closing the app owning the threads or just the threads themselves), before using the "safely remove" feature. This can be done using 3rd party tools that could view file handles of any running threads, e.g. Process Explorer.

Realistically you probably want to do 1. MS at various times told people feel free to unplug usb without using safe removal. And frankly if there's a process that you don't know about is writing something to your flash drive, chances are you don't care about losing whatever it's writing.

You can do 2 if you are really curious what's stopping you from using "safely remove". I've done that a few times out of annoyance and found out some 3rd party app has a habit of claiming territory on newly mounted partitions.

And just to be clear, writing cache policy is not why you can't safely remove. It's all those open file handles that Windows don't feel like closing. It's basically the same as when you want to delete/move a file and Windows tells you it's in use (and often without telling you who's using it)

xiaomy
  • 121
1

Try a software called "LockHnuter", basically it searches and kills the app which is holding up the SSD.

Also make sure your Windows Defender isn't scanning your drive if it's causing the eject issue.

Nandini
  • 71