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I have never used a computer where pressing the "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media"-button has resulted in an immediate response. Most other functions responds almost immediate, whereas it almost always takes a few seconds for the "Eject USB Product String" window to appear. (I'll admit, sometimes it happens fast, but that's very rarely, even on new computers.)

Is there a reason why this should be slower than other commands? Is it due to the time it takes the computer to figure out what can be removed?

enter image description here

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    the system has to poll the bus to see what devices are on it, and wait for them to respond and enumerate the resources associated with them. Apr 10, 2014 at 15:52
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    That’s a good explanation, but it still takes the same amount of (long) time even if there is only a single drive. It does seem to pop up slightly faster if you click it a second time, but it still takes a while.
    – Synetech
    Apr 10, 2014 at 17:13
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    @Synetech, I believe bus polling algorithms use a set time-out, so they send the query signal, and wait X time for responses. that would explain the seemingly static lag. not a canonical answer however; I'm not an engineer. Apr 10, 2014 at 18:09
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    Run ProcMon in background and look what is slow: channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Defrag-Tools/… Apr 10, 2014 at 18:20
  • There may also be some programs or resources that are unwilling to relinquish control of the USB hardware or that take some time to respond. In my experience (with Vista), if I had run Explorer on the device (assuming a pen drive for the example), it will take longer than if nothing had run on it (even Explorer's autorun), where the removal would be instant. Apr 10, 2014 at 21:32

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That’s because Windows, to improve performance, uses a technique called "deferred writes" wherein Windows doesn’t always immediately write everything to your external drive each time you use it. Rather, it consolidates lots of small writes into one big write by holding the data in memory.

It’s just like washing the dishes; it’s far more efficient to do one dishwasher load per day than do a load each time you use a single cup or plate.

But the downside is that some of the data you think you transferred to your USB drive may actually still be in your computer’s memory. That’s why you shouldn’t just pull the drive out but first use the Safely Remove Hardware icon to force Windows to write to the drive anything it is holding in memory.

That’s easy enough to say, but the Windows "Safely Remove Hardware" feature is confusing to use, particularly if you have several USB devices. Worse still, the icon often goes missing from the system tray.

For Faster remove you can change your USB disk Setting to protect Mode. but in this mode transfer is slower.

But other way is using "usb-disk-ejector" this Software is Free and portable. fast and safe.

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    I don't think it explains why the "Safely Remove Hardware" function is so slow. I have not observed any difference between using it on a USB stick where I was writing data, and where I was only reading data. I do not believe it's because of the deferred writes only. Apr 11, 2014 at 1:08
  • This does not answer the question.
    – user494585
    Nov 1, 2017 at 21:04
  • Referred program might be a good workaround though even if not strictly answering the question.
    – LawrenceC
    Jan 22, 2018 at 22:11
  • The default behavior for removable drives is to not defer writes, for this exact reason. Mar 13, 2019 at 21:41
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Everytime you hit that icon to "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media", it triggers the same process (in background) as opening Devices & Printers.

A relatively bigger no. of connected virtual and/or network printers and other devices may cause it to work slower.

If you could bear an extra icon in your taskbar, here's a work around (might be little annoying to keep) -

Go to Control Panel -> View devices and printers. Whatever time it takes to open is its one time thing. If you could keep this window minimized (maybe to the very left) on the taskbar, it can save time while trying to eject devices.

enter image description here

Going forward, whenever you connect a device, OS would update this window (devices and printers) in background and would keep it synced. And when you click this icon enter image description here it's gonna work faster.

Alternatively, since you have that Devices and printers window opened already (though minimized), you can restore it, click on the device and choose to eject. (two ways as in below image).

enter image description here

Good luck.

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  • This is not correct. The "Devices and Printers" display (and Device Manager) work on data that already exists (a tree of structures called Device Nodes). "Safely remove hardware" takes longer. So does "Scan for hardware changes" in Device Manager. Mar 13, 2019 at 21:33
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The fastest way to eject a thumb drive is to open "computer" from the start menu (or create a desktop shortcut to "computer"), right click on the drive's icon (not it's name) and click on eject from the pull down. This works with windows 7 but I haven't tried it in anything else. You still get the "safe to remove" dialogue.

This option doesn't show up for an external hard drive but works with the optical drive.

I don't know how this jives with delayed write, but it's almost instant.

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