I’ve written about a trick on how to hide or remove safely remove hardware try icon. I realize that it is not a very useful tip because many of us owns a USB flash drive nowadays and we need the Safely Remove Hardware icon to eject or unplug our USB device so that the files in our USB flash drive won’t get corrupted.

Although Windows by default choses Optimize for quick removal on Write Caching and Safe Removal policies, there are times I’ve noticed when I tried to stop the plugged in USB flash drive device at Safely Remove Hardware, it says “The device cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later.” If I forcefully unplug my USB flash drive that time, I risk my files getting corrupted. So never trust the “Optimize for quick removal” setting!

There are times that the Safely Remove Hardware Icon is missing or disappeared from the try bar. In Windows Safe Mode, you can’t find the Safely Remove Hardware icon at all! Is shutting down the computer the only way to safely stop and unplug your USB devices? Fortunately not. Here are some ways you can bring back the Safely Remove Hardware window when the icon is missing.

First of all, make sure that the Safely Remove Hardware icon is not set as “Always Hide“.

The manual way of bringing back the Safely Remove Hardware window is by running a command. Go to Start, Run, type in the following line and click OK. The command below is case sensitive.


That will bring up the “Safely Remove Hardware” dialog which you can use to stop the USB device that you want to unplug.

If somehow your Windows is really in bad shape and the Safely Remove Hardware icon is never displayed at your tray bar, you can create a shortcut or even a batch file using the command line above. Just run the shortcut or batch file and the Safely Remove Hardware dialog window will appear.

Here’s a way on how you can “TRY” to restore Safely Remove Hardware icon back to tray bar. The reason I use the word TRY is because some people had success with it but I didn’t. It might work for you…
1. Open My Computer
2. Right click on the USB flash drive and click Properties
3. Click on the Hardware tab and select the removable drive from the list
4. Click the Properties button
5. Click on the Policies tab
6. Change it from “Optimize for quick removal” to “Optimize for performance” (You can change it back to Optimize for quick removal once the Safely Remove Hardware icon has been restored)

OK, if you can’t find the run command or don’t know how to create a shortcut or batch file, here’s a simple and straight forward FREE tool which you can use to quickly and safely remove USB devices in Windows. USB Disk Ejector is able to eject any USB device.

To stop and safely remove a USB device using USB Disk Ejector, just double click or press enter for the device displayed at the interface. Love this tool because it’s free, small, portable and easy to use.

[ Download USB Disk Ejector ]

[tags]usb, windows, unplug, eject, safely remove hardware[/tags]