The worst part about ejecting is when it says the drive is in use but you know for a fact that the drive is NOT in use. At that point everyone just pulls the drive out. This is the most common reason why a usb drive has the dirty bit set.
Resource Monitor can be useful for checking what processes are actively accessing the drive, though it doesn't always show everything like the kernel privileged processes. Usually something stupid like windows defender is the culprit, or windows trying to index the drive
@@cyberyogicowindler2448 There's no AV on this PC. There's no nothing except a few programs. This 'in-use' thing is a known Windows issue and has been for 20+ years.
I have received over a hundred such error messages over 20 years and have done the scan. Never once has the scan found a problem. It's like the offer to run a Windows analysis of a problem. The analysis NEVER finds the cause or fixes the problem.
I hated the message that used to ask to format FAT32 drives when they were perfectly fine. Think that was brought in around Windows Vista or Win 7. Who thought that was a good idea to place in the OS was crazy. Users without knowledge that the drive could be fine may click on this and lose their data.
It should notify you of initiating the scan and its progress while mounting the drive and if there still is a problem then give you a detailed informed error notification. The general problem with microsoft is there are many many worse scenarios from lazy error handling coding in windows that can be disasterous.
I have an external ssd and multiple times the scan and fix prompt has appeared. Usually it's because I was careless when unplugging the drive (I shared the drive between computers). It's my fault so when the fix happens, the most recent files I use usually get corrupted. I since then make sure to eject every time (and disable write caching)
@@JunglTemple This is true. I needed to use IE for a program which expects to see iexplore.exe but Microsoft disabled IE on Win10. They could've removed it, and allowed users to install it, but NO. They think enabling IE mode in edge is what we need.
This comment goes back at least 10 years, and probably more like 15 or 20. I told Windows to proceed with the scan and fix process. When it was done, the USB drive had no files listed in Explorer. There had been lots of files on that drive. From that point on, I never allowed Windows to scan AND fix with a single click. Once bitten, twice shy!
had the same happen..in my case it was a external spinning drive connected to USB port ...there was apparently something wrong with the MBR (Master Boot Record) so Windows solution was to zero out the MBR and wala a "blank drive" that needed to be "formatted" ..i yanked the drive quickly (to make sure no data would be written to it until i was ready) got a MBR repair util and ran it and it fixed it..there were tens of thousands of files on the drive..
Same here - I no longer allow Windows to fix dives, but occasionally I will allow scans. Other times, it will put the whole file system (of an external drive) on hold and scan stuff making me wait until it's done. Then, I just hit ESC and continue on with what I'm doing. (Sarcasm on) Am pretty sure MS dislikes that, cuz they love knowing what's on my drives ! lol /sarcasm off. :)
That happened to me a looong time ago. Might have been WinXP? I essentially stopped using it for that OS. I started using it again at some point, I think Win 8.1, 10, and 11, and I haven't had any problems with it since.
thank you for the explanation! its seems like such a simple thing, im baffled why it can't just tell you what happened instead of being as vague and unhelpful as possible. it's really frustrating how far into the weeds the average Windows user has to go to now just to figure out random little issues like this. i feel like it wasnt always this bad, but maybe im just dumb lol
Windows 3.1 Exception Error has occurred please reboot Win95: An Unrecoverable Error has occurred Windows is shutting down For both of these there was no further explanation or error code there are hundreds of errors like this.. of course BSD (Blue Screen of Death) for Win95..Win98 etc at least it has technical info.. before that when Win 3.0 and Win 3.1 and Win 3.11 crashed it would just be random garbage all over the screen usually with the speaker screeeching.. A Dirty Bit has been used as has far back as Win 95 (and Windows NT 3.5) to see if the system was shutdown properly..on starting of Windows the dirty bit would be checked and would be set.... if you went through the Shutdown then the bit would would be unset
@@MickeyMouseParkBSOD for blue screen. BSD is for Berkley Software Distribution which when combined makes for different things like BSD licence or BSD Unix, generally if we refer to just BSD we mean the BSD-made operating system.
Bro this happens all the time when using a drive on Windows after using the same drive on Linux. Run the CHDSK and low and behold no errors whatsoever found.
+1 to OP, it happens all the time when mounting on Windows just after unmounting from Linux kernel. Even after unmounting the filesystem *cleanly* I will say. Now we will have to find out with hex dump on the block device, at least we have an offset to watch for 😌
@@flamingjohn7595 It has great own file systems. Any more support brings up more support cases and of course security possibilities. Plus the ext file systems were optimized for how Linux works, not how Windows works (NTFS is opimized for Windows with its ACLs etc.).
When I switched to Linux, I kept getting corrupted files on my USB sticks. It took me over a year to realize that copying isn't done when the "cp" command returns or the progress window disappears. The difference between the filesystem and the storage medium, and the importance of syncing, are probably the most obscure things I've encountered.
@@henry_tsai and it would tell you it’s still writing to the drive. Windows has a disc cashing “feature” that basically just makes your drive look faster than it actually is by holding the remaining data in ram while it’s writing. But to the user it claims it’s done…
This has been happening to me recently when copying stuf over the my external drives in linux. Go over the windows and its like "wtf or these currupted file bits?" So that's what's up.
This happened a lot to me back when I used to sync my classic iPods with iTunes. Most times I was in a hurry and never bothered to eject the iPod first because I had to run to catch the bus... guess it makes sense now. Excellent video for us "advanced beginners" casual users :D
The dirty bit is managed by Windows. Each storage drive has an identifier. If the identifier matches one previously seen and stored in your Windows OS, the metadata for that drive is pulled. The metadata stores information about the removable drive that is important to the operating system. This metadata includes the Dirty Bit, a simple binary digit that represents the state that drive was in the last time that OS saw it.
From my research, the term “Dirty Bit” comes from its original use in Memory Management which can be thought of like this: If you’ve edited it but haven’t saved it yet, it’s “dirty.” If you haven’t touched it since the last save, it’s “clean.” Hence the name.
Interesting to finally hear the explanation on this. I've had this error on multiple drives, even though I always eject them because I'm worried it might do harm if I don't. Even purchased a new drive some years back and it had the error from the first time I plugged it into my PC, lol. From that moment on I knew not to take it too seriously. So I just ignore it now, still ejecting every time, and using my USB drives without problems.
It’s kinda interesting macOS deals with this the other way around. When you unplug a drive without properly ejecting it, instead of telling you to repair the drive next time you plug it in, macOS would tell you immediately: ‘You idiot! Eject before you unplug it!’.
Ah yes, the infamous macOS eject popup. I have a cheap usb dongle to my macbook air that when I have a usb drive plugged in, always seems to disconnect when i just move the dongle a little bit (quite sensitive), and when I do it too much the eject popups just flood the right side of my screen and I have to manually close them
@@Overlandpage55-theOG It definitely does at least sometimes if you have delayed write caching enabled (which on USB drives is not the default setting).
... even though it was specifically told what the text should be. I once tried to get Microsoft Image Creator to show me three squirrels cavorting in the snow but it insisted on drawing at least eight. Hmmm - a computer which can't count up to three reliably.
I dont know why that was even used here. There are plenty of stock images like this that would be better. Or just taking a picture yourself and spending 20 minutes in an image editor.
FAT based drives aren't very reliable so the dirty bit tells the OS it should run a scan the next time the drive is mounted. NTFS rarely goes "dirty" because the journal can be rolled back to put the drive back into a known good configuration.
Since you asked, I did experience this message about something being wrong with a USB drive. It’s only happened twice, very recently, and for the first time ever in my long experiences. Both times were with the same USB drive, and both were just after having that drive plugged into a friend’s desktop. He told me he did eject it properly, so I guess it got something written to it, or something else you mentioned caused it. I ran the scan both times and as you mentioned, it reported that nothing wrong was found. Thanks for the explanation. I’ll eagerly watch your next video too. Also I’m glad to finally see a hex patch utility out there. I used to patch CP/M back in the day, plus I hex-patched systems after sys-genning a room-sized HP computer at Westinghouse back in the early 1980s.
Making the USB drive dirty all the time by the command would be a pretty harmless prank for my colleagues. I guess I know what I will do before 1st of April :)
8:08 If a background process is using it and task manager doesn’t show any obvious program, using File Explorer will ask to close any programs. (Most people probably know this but I didn’t for a while and thought it might help.❤
Unfortunately this doesn't apply to privileged processes, such as Windows itself. The most common culprits of unwanted activity on a drive (with no apparent processes showing up in resource monitor/tskmgr) you want to eject is windows defender and the indexing service.
Okay, but I often get a pop-up that tells me I still can't eject the USB drive safely. I assume something is still going on behind the scenes, but as someone who's not very tech-savvy, I'm sure everything I did is finished, and I've already closed all the programs that might be using the USB drive
One thing that can trigger this error even if you really are waiting for all data files to finish copy first, it's likely that System Volume Information folder. It's a frustrating thing but there is NO way to fully disable that folder getting created, even by explicitly telling your OS not to create a recovery set on the drive, short of actually turning off various drive services which kills the feature on your internal drives too. MS really needs to fix that setting so it actually works and stops creating that folder on external drives.
You may have talked about this, but another thing that occurs with external drives is when they are in an unsupported file system for Windows. It will say that "it's not formatted" and you should totally NOT format if is just other file system.
I get this error almost every single time but I don't know if it's because I use macOS alongside windows so maybe macOS might be messing with that bit value for a whole different reason and windows is just confused because yes sometimes I do unplug my drive in the middle of a file transfer, but macOS usually knows that it could recover itself And it really deletes the corrupted data when you plug it back 9:31
I just plugged in an old flash drive and it gave this message. Considering that I plugged it in to flash Linux Mint on in preparation for my new laptop, that may have been the last time I see this message.
And this is why you're always supposed to wait until it is fully dismounted, avoiding the drive from being removed mid-write. I've also run into this when only Reading a drive too.
Always use safe eject whether it's fixed or removable. No matter what Microsoft tries to tell you. You never know what's still using the drive, I've even seen Windows Defender preventing me from ejecting it in the past
I have a certain scientific device with a very basic system on it... You can plug a USB drive, copy the data to it, eject it, and then when I plug it into my PC it says it's dirty anyway... It seems that the "Eject" button does nothing there...
Yes, I've seen this error. In some cases a Windows-formatted USB stick was flagged as having a problem. In others, freshly FAT32-formatted via Linux distros would be flagged as having a problem, which was odd. Thanks for the explanation.
The issue I have is trying to eject the drive and windows says that the device is being accessed. If I have all programs closed there shouldn't be anything accessing it.
Something I discovered from this channel was the Microsoft PowerToys application. It includes a file locksmith that can tell you what applications are requesting access to the drive, and "end" them.
In addition to Windows Vista introducing self-healing NTFS, Windows 8 expanded the types of errors it can fix. I seem to be noticing an irony here: Windows versions that were hated introduced a technology that improved reliability. Windows Me introduced System Restore
Sometimes the things Microsoft introduced to improve stability or security ARE the reason everyone hated it. Vista for example finally stopped granting every program admin-level access automatically, which broke backward compatibility with a lot of lazily-coded programs. By the time Windows 7 came out, we had all upgraded to versions that accounted for this, so everyone who had held off on upgrading from XP was like "Oh hey everything works fine now."
If you get this a lot AND its accompanied by the drive unplugging sound constantly AND you have a USB hub running multiple devices theres a good chance youre just trying to pull too much power from one bus.
After having a ton of my important files deleted without confirmation, I stopped clicking on the "Repair" option Windows provides and just ignore the error. And yes, before anyone asks, those files were working perfectly and the programs used to open those files never reported anything. The video is very informative but I do think this should have been mentioned. And if this has never happened to you, you my friend don't use USB drives that much. PS: I do safely remove my USB drives and make sure nothing is writing to it if it says the drive can't be safely removed. Why it keeps giving me that error on multiple drives is beyond me.
hate to break it to ya, but the scanner is just chkdsk, which is something windows runs automatically on your system drive pretty frequently. never personally heard of it corrupting data though. could have been something else
@@hoffer_moment there are tons of instances where chkdsk has deleted files, look it up. I'm not saying it does it all the time but my problem is that it's not a reliable "repair" option if you have important files on the drive. Why not just show us which files it's about to delete before doing so. It's easy to tell people they're wrong on the internet but when the same stuff hapens to yourself you start seeing the real picture. I don't care if people believe me or not, I just wanted people to know my experience and be cautious in the future
@@lonelybookworm i've used it all the time on many different drives with no ill effects. one thing that did break my windows installation a lil bit was the dism 'startcomponentcleanup' type stuff some people recommend running after chkdsk and before sfc
The PS4 Pro did this all of the time with an external HDD I was using (PlayStation Certified too). You can have all games and such closed, turn it off via menu, then once you turn it in, it goes through this. It also always said it was solved.
Windows Vista has actually introduced many useful and secure behind-the-scenes features which is often overlooked by many which is sad. Also, you should make a video about the safely remove feature of windows that does not work on external HDDs, saying that's it in use even if not by user or applications. [DriveLetter]:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\ is detected by lockhunter is which is being used by system process with pid 4 and cannot be force stopped. I face this issue with my WD My Passport 1 TB from 2019
@@bhasitl if indexing is disabled you can just unplug as long as none of the files are open It's in the properties for the drive in file explorer, there will be a bit of time while it goes and applies properties to every file and folder, takes longer the more files
Man, I watched you some years ago when you were a parody tech channel. And now seeing you after all this year, you sure have grown... I guess you were pretty young when you first started TH-cam?
Concerning write activity you didn't know about, I can't remember if it was still during the prime time of Win7 or with the earlier versions of Win10, but I had it happen SO often that ejecting USB sticks or external hard drives failed because "something is still accessing them", and when I checked via Process Explorer it was most of the time the system process itself and often had to do with the MFT (master file table) of the drive. This made it really tempting to skip ejecting and just pull the drive out, because the only other way of "fixing" the lock was a reboot.
I always got this error and was like, "Ugh, it's probably because my dumb ASUS computer has a faulty USB port", because before I had my gaming PC, I used ASUS and sometimes it would constantly say "something is wrong with your drive" and it would disconnect in the middle of transferring files. At least I know that it's basically saying that something might not have transferred all the data. Because it one time disconnected my USB while it was transferring a file.
I use a program called USB Safely Remove to force-release my USB drive when Windows just won't let it go. It also shows which program is holding onto a drive. Very handy.
Can you set the C drive (or the drive that Windows is installed on) to be dirty on versions after and including Vista? Would it then prompt you to run chkdsk on startup?
I had come across this before and found out what it was, be aware Windows Hibernation/fast start has a habit of setting the dirty bit on removable drives
As a Tech gong back to the days of DOS 2.0, Microsoft have done a really shit job with the lack of detail for what error messages actually mean, in supporting end users. - End users should not have to research for such common issues and how to resolve them - The effort by Microsoft would have been negligible to provide the required detail in the description of the error. Can you imagine how many support calls have occurred from these sorts of common issues and the resulting economic cost and counter-productivity.
For something as simple as this, instead of saying the drive has a problem making guess work,rather than adding " potential writing status" on the end. even that would explain the whole thing. if it is 1 that is it, was not checked if it was safe to remove, nothing for anyone to worry about by adding a few extra words.
i go back as far as you do first use of MSDOS was 2.11.41...2 of my favorites one old one and a newer one with PNP .. "An Unknown Error has occurred please reboot"..no other info no stack info.. nothing...also an Exception Error has occurred Shutting down Windows ..... Found Unknown Device ..installing Unknown device..Unknown device successfully installed..
@@MickeyMousePark Microsoft have some real shitty lazy coders when it comes to error handling, logging & notification. It is beyond me they did not develop a standard for the error message dialogue box for coders to call, giving users the option for help, access to more detailed log information, button to specific help documentation even if online and in the later versions troubleshooting and resolution wizards. The amount of money wasted in the industry and by clients having to raise and resolve problem tickets alone not as well as the trouble from misdiagnosis and the breaking systems and data-loss by over-confident under-qualified users. I had one recently where a user factory defaulted their nas used as a back-up destination for several workstations even though I'd emailed them and spoken to the owner offering phone support they blew up their back-up system in their faces. Their phone died so the ISP defaulted gateway losing the MAC to IP DHCP configuration and LAN configuration that the previous owner had changed from default settings, causing the LAN to be on a different subnet thus the NAS to drop off their network. A compounding of idiocy.
I learned how to make these changes back in the 1980s with Action Reply to get infinite lives 😋. Nice explanation! I like the advice, too. Sensible. You never know what's going on under the hood.
I have a problem! Basically my flash drive has suddenly become read-only and I'm not sure why or how. I've literally tried everything. the data is still intact even after attempting a format but now the drive is completely useless. Any ideas? All help appreciated
Meh. I never eject and always just ignore the error. It's become just another Windows annoyance at this point. Honestly, I think Windows could just get rid of the whole eject thing, and prevent errors from even being an issue, by using an asynchronous Service to constantly scan the drive for errors and also keep it in an ejected state, where the system would "fake" mount the drive, so it's always visible in explorer while it's physically inserted, but behind the scenes it only ever gets mounted during a read/write operation, and is always ended with the drive being "ejected". Then, we only issue an error if a write was interrupted and the system was unable to clear the dirty bit. Then we also implement something like a "resume download" feature, that keeps track of where an interrupt happened, so that the user can re-insert the USB - at any time - to finish the write operation and clear the dirty bit. And finally, to put a cherry on top: add a simple icon to the taskbar, to indicate when a drive is unsafe to remove.
The whole point of having to click on eject is to not allow any program to write to it anymore, preventing any corruption in the first place. Continuously checking a drive for corruption can be very demanding, depending on what type of storage it is.
@@NorthLaker You're half right about eject. Except your confusing its intended purpose with its side effect. Its stated/intended purpose is to make the drive safe to eject, so that it can be removed from the system, which has that side effect of making it unwriteable, and only for the purpose of preventing corruption. But it isn't intended as a tool for users to prevent programs writing to the drive. As for our service continuously checking the drive for corruption: No, it doesn't have to be demanding, unless it's poorly written code. Perhaps I should have used "persistent" rather than "continuous" however, because our algorithm doesn't actually need to continuously scan anything;. See Windows internally raises events for literally everything, which are accessible by everything, including when a drive is being write/read to. And because a USB doesn't just randomly corrupt itself just sitting there, and because Windows already has systems built in to detect/fix data stream errors during read/write, our service only needs to kick in when the drive is being accessed and only keep track of where in a file the transfer is at (with a simple integer memory address pointer), and if that gets interrupted at any point, nothing else. Since an interruption is the only thing that will create the corruption we're trying to prevent, that's all we have to do, and it's overhead would be nearly undetectable in a unit test or benchmark. As for other kinds of corruption, that's not our concern, because that would the result of some other problem requiring different tools and fixes.
I've had this happen twice with my usb. I always made sure it said it was safe to eject before removing it. Never knew what caused it, but it seems to have stopped happening after I discovered that I need to check if the files put on it show their size correctly before ejecting it.
A classmate at uni just had their files from a usb they had borked. Most folders converted to 4kb files and a FILES.000 folder with some files renamed were in tbere, but others corrupted. They said that the scan disk message appeared and he followed it through, but i have no clue what couldve happen with it. It wasnt a virus since no files were hidden away like most usually do in these situations, so i think that chkdsk did something there. Kinda weird
I have a "smart" tv that I use for advertising inside my store. It obviously doesn't have an "eject" for the usb drive, but every time I remove the drive for updating the video, after inserting it on the PC, the message pops up. So I'm assuming it has the dirty bit changed, even though the TV is not supposed to be writing anything to the drive.
Now I know why exactly 😁 Can u find out how can micro SD card get corrupted, cannot be formatted and files cannot be deleted? Tried many ways in Windows & Linux but to no avail. Maybe queue for future video?
I used to see this every single time I used the pendrive I took to school/university, and sometime later I just gave up trying to fix it every time, thinking it was the drive itself. But then I noticed that if I fixed it in another machine it stopped happening until I used it on my home PC, then it started happening again. Idk if I had a virus or some other background program doing this to drives on my pc, but ever since I formatted and installed Win 10 (this was back on 7) I never saw it again. It is the main reason I always make sure to eject every single drive before disconnecting it nowadays.
I could be wrong, but doesn't this prompt also come up sometimes when the drive is in a format windows doesnt usually like? (eg. ext4). Its been a while since I've put one of those into my pc, but I could be confusing it with the "you must format this drive first before you can use it" prompt. I usually try to safe eject when I can. I've been finding in recent times, on Win 11 (could be fixed by now, depending when reading this), if you use the "search" from file explorer, but then just end the search improperly (eg, use the "x" next to your search term or press "back") it sometimes doesnt end operation and it prevents safe eject of the drive. I've noticed this on more than one occasion. First time I saw it, I saw an extra task instance (of explorer) running in task manager, and ending that task allowed me to safe eject.
Hi Theo - I've been aware of this issue for many years and I always have "safely removed my hardware" because I treat the drive data as if it was the most valuable resource I have - because it was created with that most valuable resource we all posses - TIME! The problem I run into is occasionally I'll be told by Windows that the drive is busy, when I know it's not, because I just wrote to it with the one and only program I was using - a video editor - that has not only finished updating, but that I have closed!?!? Now, I've only found one work-around, as opposed to just proceeding with the unplug anyways, and that's to initiate a defrag/trim on the drive? Now if it's a trim, implying SSD, then it's quick. But if it's a defrag on a non-SSD drive, it can sometimes be a ridiculous wait! Any suggestions? Paul M. Atlanta, GA
I have a drive that always shows this error when I plug it into one computer, but never shows the error when I plug it into my other computer. I have no idea why.
lol ... yeah, I think that all the time ... they're often trying to fix stuff, and confusing me in the process! Staying on Windows 10, not moving to 11, but they're trying to sneakt hings in ...
I want to know why I usually have to eject the drive more than once to get the "safe to remove" message. I assume something is accessing it, but Resource Monitor/Disk tab doesn't show anything on that drive.
The most frustrating part about "eject" is when Windows refuses to let you do so. When I say "eject", I'm doing the computer a favor in warning it that I'm about to pull the plug. I'm not asking for Windows' permission. 😂 Some programs (even Explorer itself sometimes) keeps an open handle to the drive that produces this whole "I'm not gonna let you" effect when trying to eject - when there is absolutely no actual activity taking place. I go by the "you get one chance" rule. If I click Eject and it gives me any lip, that's the chance. Yoink. And it serves me well, as I rarely see this message. But it is sure nice to know why it comes up.
"Dirty Bit!" Windows favorite feature for external storage drives. :) Windows: There is an error in your USB drive. Grayson: Scan the drive. Windows: No errors found. Yeah. Welcome to the world of "dirty bits." :)
But what about if it says Incert A Disk Into (Drive) How do you fix that? I got a OLD 80 GB external and whenever I plug it in it does know it's there and show a drive letter but asks me to incert a Disk Into it.
I try to eject a USB drive and it keeps telling me it is not safe because some program is still using it. I close all programs and it still gives the warning. All I can do is Restart or Shutdown. Why?
possibles: is Windows Explorer open and displaying contents of the drive? open Task Manager and kill tasks one at a time testing each time to see if you can eject the drive..this may give a clue of which task is holding the drive
After 24 years of ignoring this error, finally someone explains it 😂
I always just did it and it said there were errors (once in the notification and once in the wizard) then it did a scan and nothing was wrong.
Naaaah, of course it was explained before many times, it is even documented by Microsoft. But you finally saw someone you follow explain it ;)...
Yea. Me just about to said that but u already 😂
can't argue😂
fr😂
The worst part about ejecting is when it says the drive is in use but you know for a fact that the drive is NOT in use. At that point everyone just pulls the drive out. This is the most common reason why a usb drive has the dirty bit set.
Exactly, or I force it to remove it safely, which I'm certain makes no difference, so annoying!
Resource Monitor can be useful for checking what processes are actively accessing the drive, though it doesn't always show everything like the kernel privileged processes. Usually something stupid like windows defender is the culprit, or windows trying to index the drive
Often an antivirus software insists on keeping the drive for scanning if you can't eject it Turn off antivirus and try again.
@@cyberyogicowindler2448 There's no AV on this PC. There's no nothing except a few programs. This 'in-use' thing is a known Windows issue and has been for 20+ years.
Got that like a hundred times...
I have received over a hundred such error messages over 20 years and have done the scan. Never once has the scan found a problem. It's like the offer to run a Windows analysis of a problem. The analysis NEVER finds the cause or fixes the problem.
It actually helped me a few times but usually it's nothing wrong in the first place
For me, the scan has always deleted all data on a drive. I made the error of running it so many times on so many different computers.
I hated the message that used to ask to format FAT32 drives when they were perfectly fine. Think that was brought in around Windows Vista or Win 7. Who thought that was a good idea to place in the OS was crazy. Users without knowledge that the drive could be fine may click on this and lose their data.
It should notify you of initiating the scan and its progress while mounting the drive and if there still is a problem then give you a detailed informed error notification. The general problem with microsoft is there are many many worse scenarios from lazy error handling coding in windows that can be disasterous.
I have an external ssd and multiple times the scan and fix prompt has appeared. Usually it's because I was careless when unplugging the drive (I shared the drive between computers). It's my fault so when the fix happens, the most recent files I use usually get corrupted. I since then make sure to eject every time (and disable write caching)
I always mock how it says errors were found, scans it then proceeds to tell me that no errors could be found on my USB.
LMAO🤣
That error is also shown when you plug in a drive with a filesystem that Windows doesn't natively recognize, like ext4.
This is likely because the hex byte its checking for is greater than 0 for that drive formatting
Isn't that a feature that asks you to format the drive? Don't do that, you will lose the data on the ext4 partition.
Unless if you create another partition in the drive's partition table as NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT
Microsoft hates compatibility
@@JunglTemple This is true.
I needed to use IE for a program which expects to see iexplore.exe but Microsoft disabled IE on Win10.
They could've removed it, and allowed users to install it, but NO.
They think enabling IE mode in edge is what we need.
it always make me panic that my data might get corrupt lol
At least your USB works 😅
It scares 1st time, 2nd time, maybe 3rd time, but later we just close this notification 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 "i dont trust you, windows"
what are you hiding?🤨
That's the words of a man who has indeed lost all information from a drive....I know I have lol usb 2.0 sucked like that
You think you data might start accepting bribes?
I always get that when plugging in my external drive
same. It died recently. the MBR is currupted and didn't even get detected by windows
@@lucasandcalebchannel for some reason I read "it died" as "I died" and was about to make a joke on it 😂😂
cuz u have dirty stuff in there, dont u
same
i have an old external hdd and that message always shows up, luckily i don't use it anymore so i don't need to worry
This comment goes back at least 10 years, and probably more like 15 or 20. I told Windows to proceed with the scan and fix process. When it was done, the USB drive had no files listed in Explorer. There had been lots of files on that drive. From that point on, I never allowed Windows to scan AND fix with a single click. Once bitten, twice shy!
had the same happen..in my case it was a external spinning drive connected to USB port ...there was apparently something wrong with the MBR (Master Boot Record) so Windows solution was to zero out the MBR and wala a "blank drive" that needed to be "formatted" ..i yanked the drive quickly (to make sure no data would be written to it until i was ready) got a MBR repair util and ran it and it fixed it..there were tens of thousands of files on the drive..
@@Acceleronics I had the same thing happen to me, never again!
Same here - I no longer allow Windows to fix dives, but occasionally I will allow scans. Other times, it will put the whole file system (of an external drive) on hold and scan stuff making me wait until it's done. Then, I just hit ESC and continue on with what I'm doing. (Sarcasm on) Am pretty sure MS dislikes that, cuz they love knowing what's on my drives ! lol /sarcasm off. :)
@@MickeyMousePark ... ouch !! Sucks when that happens. :(
I learned once the hard way, or maybe it was twice. No, no more. :)
That happened to me a looong time ago. Might have been WinXP?
I essentially stopped using it for that OS. I started using it again at some point, I think Win 8.1, 10, and 11, and I haven't had any problems with it since.
thank you for the explanation! its seems like such a simple thing, im baffled why it can't just tell you what happened instead of being as vague and unhelpful as possible.
it's really frustrating how far into the weeds the average Windows user has to go to now just to figure out random little issues like this. i feel like it wasnt always this bad, but maybe im just dumb lol
Windows 3.1 Exception Error has occurred please reboot
Win95: An Unrecoverable Error has occurred Windows is shutting down
For both of these there was no further explanation or error code there are hundreds of errors like this..
of course BSD (Blue Screen of Death) for Win95..Win98 etc at least it has technical info..
before that when Win 3.0 and Win 3.1 and Win 3.11 crashed it would just be random garbage all over the screen usually with the speaker screeeching..
A Dirty Bit has been used as has far back as Win 95 (and Windows NT 3.5) to see if the system was shutdown properly..on starting of Windows the dirty bit would be checked and would be set.... if you went through the Shutdown then the bit would would be unset
@@MickeyMousePark It's not BSD, it's BSOD though.
@@MickeyMouseParkBSOD for blue screen. BSD is for Berkley Software Distribution which when combined makes for different things like BSD licence or BSD Unix, generally if we refer to just BSD we mean the BSD-made operating system.
@@ThePlayerOfGames typo on my part sorry. yes BSOD
Bro this happens all the time when using a drive on Windows after using the same drive on Linux. Run the CHDSK and low and behold no errors whatsoever found.
Well, that is true, also MICROSOFT WHY NOT EXT FILE FORMAT SUPPORT?!
@@flamingjohn7595 I assumed that's the root of my issue. It's annoying af
To me it also happens between windows 7 and 10
+1 to OP, it happens all the time when mounting on Windows just after unmounting from Linux kernel. Even after unmounting the filesystem *cleanly* I will say. Now we will have to find out with hex dump on the block device, at least we have an offset to watch for 😌
@@flamingjohn7595 It has great own file systems. Any more support brings up more support cases and of course security possibilities. Plus the ext file systems were optimized for how Linux works, not how Windows works (NTFS is opimized for Windows with its ACLs etc.).
When I switched to Linux, I kept getting corrupted files on my USB sticks. It took me over a year to realize that copying isn't done when the "cp" command returns or the progress window disappears. The difference between the filesystem and the storage medium, and the importance of syncing, are probably the most obscure things I've encountered.
ya honestly cashing files while writing and calling it done seems stupid and i turn it off in windows and linux
Just umount/eject it before unplugging it, it would write the cache to the drive, that's the whole point of ejecting.
@@henry_tsai and it would tell you it’s still writing to the drive. Windows has a disc cashing “feature” that basically just makes your drive look faster than it actually is by holding the remaining data in ram while it’s writing. But to the user it claims it’s done…
This has been happening to me recently when copying stuf over the my external drives in linux.
Go over the windows and its like "wtf or these currupted file bits?"
So that's what's up.
This happened a lot to me back when I used to sync my classic iPods with iTunes. Most times I was in a hurry and never bothered to eject the iPod first because I had to run to catch the bus... guess it makes sense now.
Excellent video for us "advanced beginners" casual users :D
1:23 Wait… Let’s backup even further - What even is a “dirty bit”?!
It’s a lyric in the song “The Time” by the Black Eyed Peas.
The dirty bit is managed by Windows. Each storage drive has an identifier. If the identifier matches one previously seen and stored in your Windows OS, the metadata for that drive is pulled. The metadata stores information about the removable drive that is important to the operating system. This metadata includes the Dirty Bit, a simple binary digit that represents the state that drive was in the last time that OS saw it.
From my research, the term “Dirty Bit” comes from its original use in Memory Management which can be thought of like this: If you’ve edited it but haven’t saved it yet, it’s “dirty.” If you haven’t touched it since the last save, it’s “clean.” Hence the name.
Interesting to finally hear the explanation on this. I've had this error on multiple drives, even though I always eject them because I'm worried it might do harm if I don't. Even purchased a new drive some years back and it had the error from the first time I plugged it into my PC, lol. From that moment on I knew not to take it too seriously. So I just ignore it now, still ejecting every time, and using my USB drives without problems.
Finally a video that's useful. Do more of these instead of like the last 5 which were useless.
Your Hexpat structure immediately took me back 40 years when I would fix Unix file systems using adb on the raw device.
Ha ha, me too. Back in ‘84, ‘85, using a hex editor called Tester and “disk map” printouts to rewrite CP/M disk sectors after corruption.
'Don't mess arround when you don't know what you're doing.'
It's a sentense I ignore of the purpose to learn.
It’s kinda interesting macOS deals with this the other way around. When you unplug a drive without properly ejecting it, instead of telling you to repair the drive next time you plug it in, macOS would tell you immediately: ‘You idiot! Eject before you unplug it!’.
Ah yes, the infamous macOS eject popup. I have a cheap usb dongle to my macbook air that when I have a usb drive plugged in, always seems to disconnect when i just move the dongle a little bit (quite sensitive), and when I do it too much the eject popups just flood the right side of my screen and I have to manually close them
Raspian does it too.
I'm pretty sure Windows does too if you remove a drive when it's being written to.
@@eDoc2020 it doesn't lol
@@Overlandpage55-theOG It definitely does at least sometimes if you have delayed write caching enabled (which on USB drives is not the default setting).
1:41 Generative AI is getting scary good at text, tho it still struggles it says "YOU FORGOTEN TO EJECT THE DR0VE"
... even though it was specifically told what the text should be. I once tried to get Microsoft Image Creator to show me three squirrels cavorting in the snow but it insisted on drawing at least eight. Hmmm - a computer which can't count up to three reliably.
I dont know why that was even used here. There are plenty of stock images like this that would be better. Or just taking a picture yourself and spending 20 minutes in an image editor.
Excellent explanation
Bro didnt even watch the vid yet
first
Thanks for explaining this ❤ I also ignore this message always.
FAT based drives aren't very reliable so the dirty bit tells the OS it should run a scan the next time the drive is mounted.
NTFS rarely goes "dirty" because the journal can be rolled back to put the drive back into a known good configuration.
aka LKG Last Known Good
Thanks for explaining the actual inner workings behind this error! I personally don't see that error often, and I don't use safe eject feature either.
Whenever I see the error I'm concerned for approximately 1 second then forget about it
Since you asked, I did experience this message about something being wrong with a USB drive. It’s only happened twice, very recently, and for the first time ever in my long experiences. Both times were with the same USB drive, and both were just after having that drive plugged into a friend’s desktop. He told me he did eject it properly, so I guess it got something written to it, or something else you mentioned caused it. I ran the scan both times and as you mentioned, it reported that nothing wrong was found. Thanks for the explanation. I’ll eagerly watch your next video too. Also I’m glad to finally see a hex patch utility out there. I used to patch CP/M back in the day, plus I hex-patched systems after sys-genning a room-sized HP computer at Westinghouse back in the early 1980s.
4:37 I see it's FAT32. The first thing I do with any flash drive above 4gb is format it to exFAT so it can take files larger than 4gb
Well now i know. Even tho i stopped using Windows and now using Debian (a Linux distribution), i still watch these videos! Thanks ThioJoe!
I finally found the answer to this decade long question. Thank you for answering it Thio Joe
Earliest I have ever been to a Thiojoe video!
7:52 I use a program to determine whether any program or file is locking my USB before ejecting it.
Making the USB drive dirty all the time by the command would be a pretty harmless prank for my colleagues. I guess I know what I will do before 1st of April :)
This often happens to my usb, this was a helpful explanation
Android boxes usually flag the USB drives as dirty if you don't unmount them first in the settings.
Thanks for such a clear explanation. So easy to follow. 👍
8:08 If a background process is using it and task manager doesn’t show any obvious program, using File Explorer will ask to close any programs. (Most people probably know this but I didn’t for a while and thought it might help.❤
Unfortunately this doesn't apply to privileged processes, such as Windows itself. The most common culprits of unwanted activity on a drive (with no apparent processes showing up in resource monitor/tskmgr) you want to eject is windows defender and the indexing service.
Okay, but I often get a pop-up that tells me I still can't eject the USB drive safely. I assume something is still going on behind the scenes, but as someone who's not very tech-savvy, I'm sure everything I did is finished, and I've already closed all the programs that might be using the USB drive
One thing that can trigger this error even if you really are waiting for all data files to finish copy first, it's likely that System Volume Information folder. It's a frustrating thing but there is NO way to fully disable that folder getting created, even by explicitly telling your OS not to create a recovery set on the drive, short of actually turning off various drive services which kills the feature on your internal drives too. MS really needs to fix that setting so it actually works and stops creating that folder on external drives.
You may have talked about this, but another thing that occurs with external drives is when they are in an unsupported file system for Windows. It will say that "it's not formatted" and you should totally NOT format if is just other file system.
I get this error almost every single time but I don't know if it's because I use macOS alongside windows so maybe macOS might be messing with that bit value for a whole different reason and windows is just confused because yes sometimes I do unplug my drive in the middle of a file transfer, but macOS usually knows that it could recover itself And it really deletes the corrupted data when you plug it back 9:31
I just plugged in an old flash drive and it gave this message. Considering that I plugged it in to flash Linux Mint on in preparation for my new laptop, that may have been the last time I see this message.
Windows formatted happily my life linux USB drive in the windows Vista era 😮💨
Anyone remember that bug from early 2021 that would mark drive C as dirty if you tried to access a specific directory from the command prompt?
No, but I'm curious what that specific directory might be. :)
Whenever you say dirty bit I have to think of the black eyed peas haha
Excellent research you did again, thank you for your work
You just brought back the memories of a terrible Black Eyed Peas song
No such thing as a terrible Black Eyed Peas song.
I actually like it, I could see how people think it's worse than the original, but it's a great edm song to dance
And this is why you're always supposed to wait until it is fully dismounted, avoiding the drive from being removed mid-write. I've also run into this when only Reading a drive too.
@@pyromethious except these happen when nothing happened
Always use safe eject whether it's fixed or removable. No matter what Microsoft tries to tell you. You never know what's still using the drive, I've even seen Windows Defender preventing me from ejecting it in the past
My brain is hardwired to belive any video made by this man is satire.
@@DiscipleDown You're technically correct - in today's world, everything looks like satire (even real news), so why not his videos? 😁
@ThomasNimmesgern that too. But mainly because it's what he became widely known for and how I was introduced.
I have a certain scientific device with a very basic system on it... You can plug a USB drive, copy the data to it, eject it, and then when I plug it into my PC it says it's dirty anyway... It seems that the "Eject" button does nothing there...
Yes, I've seen this error. In some cases a Windows-formatted USB stick was flagged as having a problem. In others, freshly FAT32-formatted via Linux distros would be flagged as having a problem, which was odd. Thanks for the explanation.
Reading will also set the dirty bit, because the file access times in the FAT are being updated and thus *something* was written to the drive.
The issue I have is trying to eject the drive and windows says that the device is being accessed. If I have all programs closed there shouldn't be anything accessing it.
Something I discovered from this channel was the Microsoft PowerToys application. It includes a file locksmith that can tell you what applications are requesting access to the drive, and "end" them.
In my case it's just cache that's holding data, sometimes it just takes multiple attempts (or a reboot/shutdown if 20 tries isn't enough).
In addition to Windows Vista introducing self-healing NTFS, Windows 8 expanded the types of errors it can fix. I seem to be noticing an irony here: Windows versions that were hated introduced a technology that improved reliability. Windows Me introduced System Restore
Sometimes the things Microsoft introduced to improve stability or security ARE the reason everyone hated it. Vista for example finally stopped granting every program admin-level access automatically, which broke backward compatibility with a lot of lazily-coded programs. By the time Windows 7 came out, we had all upgraded to versions that accounted for this, so everyone who had held off on upgrading from XP was like "Oh hey everything works fine now."
Really good video! Really interesting, I had no idea!
If you get this a lot AND its accompanied by the drive unplugging sound constantly AND you have a USB hub running multiple devices theres a good chance youre just trying to pull too much power from one bus.
After having a ton of my important files deleted without confirmation, I stopped clicking on the "Repair" option Windows provides and just ignore the error. And yes, before anyone asks, those files were working perfectly and the programs used to open those files never reported anything. The video is very informative but I do think this should have been mentioned. And if this has never happened to you, you my friend don't use USB drives that much.
PS: I do safely remove my USB drives and make sure nothing is writing to it if it says the drive can't be safely removed. Why it keeps giving me that error on multiple drives is beyond me.
hate to break it to ya, but the scanner is just chkdsk, which is something windows runs automatically on your system drive pretty frequently. never personally heard of it corrupting data though. could have been something else
@@hoffer_moment there are tons of instances where chkdsk has deleted files, look it up. I'm not saying it does it all the time but my problem is that it's not a reliable "repair" option if you have important files on the drive. Why not just show us which files it's about to delete before doing so. It's easy to tell people they're wrong on the internet but when the same stuff hapens to yourself you start seeing the real picture. I don't care if people believe me or not, I just wanted people to know my experience and be cautious in the future
@@hoffer_momentnah, I had two drives formatted by this garbage as well
@@lonelybookworm i've used it all the time on many different drives with no ill effects. one thing that did break my windows installation a lil bit was the dism 'startcomponentcleanup' type stuff some people recommend running after chkdsk and before sfc
When I manually set bit to 1 system had informed me (immediately in balloon info) of checking drive after reboot. Thank to know what it really is;)
The PS4 Pro did this all of the time with an external HDD I was using (PlayStation Certified too). You can have all games and such closed, turn it off via menu, then once you turn it in, it goes through this. It also always said it was solved.
Would have been interesting to see what happens when you set it to something else than 0 or 1? like like 255 or 127 or whatever.
Windows Vista has actually introduced many useful and secure behind-the-scenes features which is often overlooked by many which is sad.
Also, you should make a video about the safely remove feature of windows that does not work on external HDDs, saying that's it in use even if not by user or applications. [DriveLetter]:\$Extend\$RmMetadata\ is detected by lockhunter is which is being used by system process with pid 4 and cannot be force stopped. I face this issue with my WD My Passport 1 TB from 2019
disable indexing before you load the drive with files
@jasonmullinder tried enabling and disabling it but it didn't work
@@bhasitl if indexing is disabled you can just unplug as long as none of the files are open
It's in the properties for the drive in file explorer, there will be a bit of time while it goes and applies properties to every file and folder, takes longer the more files
@jasonmullinder that's what I did and it did take time but the error continues
Yes, Joe, I was in fact wondering what this meant.
What would be a good explanation is to find out what program is holding your USB drive hostage not allowing you to "safely remove your USB drive".
Man, I watched you some years ago when you were a parody tech channel. And now seeing you after all this year, you sure have grown...
I guess you were pretty young when you first started TH-cam?
starts at 3:28
Yep. The 90 second drive-by ad was annoying.
I'm sad that it took me 3 minutes and 27 seconds to come to the comments to see this
@@edwardrocca same
Use Revanced
I had a user that had a folder they couldn’t access. So check disk ran to fix it but instead it disappeared. No found folders were there.
Concerning write activity you didn't know about, I can't remember if it was still during the prime time of Win7 or with the earlier versions of Win10, but I had it happen SO often that ejecting USB sticks or external hard drives failed because "something is still accessing them", and when I checked via Process Explorer it was most of the time the system process itself and often had to do with the MFT (master file table) of the drive. This made it really tempting to skip ejecting and just pull the drive out, because the only other way of "fixing" the lock was a reboot.
I have a USB that always gave that message. Never figured out what it was, especially since nothing bad ever happened... Well, now I know why, thanks!
I always got this error and was like, "Ugh, it's probably because my dumb ASUS computer has a faulty USB port", because before I had my gaming PC, I used ASUS and sometimes it would constantly say "something is wrong with your drive" and it would disconnect in the middle of transferring files. At least I know that it's basically saying that something might not have transferred all the data. Because it one time disconnected my USB while it was transferring a file.
eevee pfp
THANKS Bro for this information 😊
Nice info to know, I've had this happen to me, and had to do some research, to correct the USB Drive.
Damn that is such a simple but efficient solution
I use a program called USB Safely Remove to force-release my USB drive when Windows just won't let it go. It also shows which program is holding onto a drive. Very handy.
Refrigerant system leakage or fault
Can you set the C drive (or the drive that Windows is installed on) to be dirty on versions after and including Vista? Would it then prompt you to run chkdsk on startup?
I always get this and got scared at first, but it happens all the time and the drive seems to work fine, this explains it very well hahaha
I had come across this before and found out what it was, be aware Windows Hibernation/fast start has a habit of setting the dirty bit on removable drives
As a Tech gong back to the days of DOS 2.0, Microsoft have done a really shit job with the lack of detail for what error messages actually mean, in supporting end users.
- End users should not have to research for such common issues and how to resolve them
- The effort by Microsoft would have been negligible to provide the required detail in the description of the error.
Can you imagine how many support calls have occurred from these sorts of common issues and the resulting economic cost and counter-productivity.
For something as simple as this, instead of saying the drive has a problem making guess work,rather than adding " potential writing status" on the end. even that would explain the whole thing. if it is 1 that is it, was not checked if it was safe to remove, nothing for anyone to worry about by adding a few extra words.
i go back as far as you do first use of MSDOS was 2.11.41...2 of my favorites one old one and a newer one with PNP ..
"An Unknown Error has occurred please reboot"..no other info no stack info.. nothing...also an Exception Error has occurred Shutting down Windows .....
Found Unknown Device ..installing Unknown device..Unknown device successfully installed..
@@MickeyMousePark Microsoft have some real shitty lazy coders when it comes to error handling, logging & notification. It is beyond me they did not develop a standard for the error message dialogue box for coders to call, giving users the option for help, access to more detailed log information, button to specific help documentation even if online and in the later versions troubleshooting and resolution wizards. The amount of money wasted in the industry and by clients having to raise and resolve problem tickets alone not as well as the trouble from misdiagnosis and the breaking systems and data-loss by over-confident under-qualified users. I had one recently where a user factory defaulted their nas used as a back-up destination for several workstations even though I'd emailed them and spoken to the owner offering phone support they blew up their back-up system in their faces. Their phone died so the ISP defaulted gateway losing the MAC to IP DHCP configuration and LAN configuration that the previous owner had changed from default settings, causing the LAN to be on a different subnet thus the NAS to drop off their network. A compounding of idiocy.
Something happened:
Something happened
I learned how to make these changes back in the 1980s with Action Reply to get infinite lives 😋. Nice explanation! I like the advice, too. Sensible. You never know what's going on under the hood.
I usually get it with a Ventoy drive
@ThioJoe
Man you are a life saver
Pretty sure this thing started popping up when I made a typo on a folder and didn't bother to fix it. Either way, truly a mystery.
I have a problem! Basically my flash drive has suddenly become read-only and I'm not sure why or how. I've literally tried everything. the data is still intact even after attempting a format but now the drive is completely useless. Any ideas? All help appreciated
Meh. I never eject and always just ignore the error. It's become just another Windows annoyance at this point.
Honestly, I think Windows could just get rid of the whole eject thing, and prevent errors from even being an issue, by using an asynchronous Service to constantly scan the drive for errors and also keep it in an ejected state, where the system would "fake" mount the drive, so it's always visible in explorer while it's physically inserted, but behind the scenes it only ever gets mounted during a read/write operation, and is always ended with the drive being "ejected". Then, we only issue an error if a write was interrupted and the system was unable to clear the dirty bit. Then we also implement something like a "resume download" feature, that keeps track of where an interrupt happened, so that the user can re-insert the USB - at any time - to finish the write operation and clear the dirty bit. And finally, to put a cherry on top: add a simple icon to the taskbar, to indicate when a drive is unsafe to remove.
The whole point of having to click on eject is to not allow any program to write to it anymore, preventing any corruption in the first place. Continuously checking a drive for corruption can be very demanding, depending on what type of storage it is.
@@NorthLaker You're half right about eject. Except your confusing its intended purpose with its side effect. Its stated/intended purpose is to make the drive safe to eject, so that it can be removed from the system, which has that side effect of making it unwriteable, and only for the purpose of preventing corruption. But it isn't intended as a tool for users to prevent programs writing to the drive.
As for our service continuously checking the drive for corruption: No, it doesn't have to be demanding, unless it's poorly written code.
Perhaps I should have used "persistent" rather than "continuous" however, because our algorithm doesn't actually need to continuously scan anything;.
See Windows internally raises events for literally everything, which are accessible by everything, including when a drive is being write/read to. And because a USB doesn't just randomly corrupt itself just sitting there, and because Windows already has systems built in to detect/fix data stream errors during read/write, our service only needs to kick in when the drive is being accessed and only keep track of where in a file the transfer is at (with a simple integer memory address pointer), and if that gets interrupted at any point, nothing else. Since an interruption is the only thing that will create the corruption we're trying to prevent, that's all we have to do, and it's overhead would be nearly undetectable in a unit test or benchmark.
As for other kinds of corruption, that's not our concern, because that would the result of some other problem requiring different tools and fixes.
I've had this happen twice with my usb. I always made sure it said it was safe to eject before removing it. Never knew what caused it, but it seems to have stopped happening after I discovered that I need to check if the files put on it show their size correctly before ejecting it.
Thanks man. Every single time i plug something in it shows that
A classmate at uni just had their files from a usb they had borked. Most folders converted to 4kb files and a FILES.000 folder with some files renamed were in tbere, but others corrupted. They said that the scan disk message appeared and he followed it through, but i have no clue what couldve happen with it. It wasnt a virus since no files were hidden away like most usually do in these situations, so i think that chkdsk did something there. Kinda weird
I have a "smart" tv that I use for advertising inside my store. It obviously doesn't have an "eject" for the usb drive, but every time I remove the drive for updating the video, after inserting it on the PC, the message pops up. So I'm assuming it has the dirty bit changed, even though the TV is not supposed to be writing anything to the drive.
Now I know why exactly 😁 Can u find out how can micro SD card get corrupted, cannot be formatted and files cannot be deleted? Tried many ways in Windows & Linux but to no avail. Maybe queue for future video?
I used to see this every single time I used the pendrive I took to school/university, and sometime later I just gave up trying to fix it every time, thinking it was the drive itself. But then I noticed that if I fixed it in another machine it stopped happening until I used it on my home PC, then it started happening again. Idk if I had a virus or some other background program doing this to drives on my pc, but ever since I formatted and installed Win 10 (this was back on 7) I never saw it again.
It is the main reason I always make sure to eject every single drive before disconnecting it nowadays.
I could be wrong, but doesn't this prompt also come up sometimes when the drive is in a format windows doesnt usually like? (eg. ext4). Its been a while since I've put one of those into my pc, but I could be confusing it with the "you must format this drive first before you can use it" prompt.
I usually try to safe eject when I can. I've been finding in recent times, on Win 11 (could be fixed by now, depending when reading this), if you use the "search" from file explorer, but then just end the search improperly (eg, use the "x" next to your search term or press "back") it sometimes doesnt end operation and it prevents safe eject of the drive. I've noticed this on more than one occasion. First time I saw it, I saw an extra task instance (of explorer) running in task manager, and ending that task allowed me to safe eject.
I often see this when plugging in a portable drive, then after the scan it says no errors were found. Windows 10.
i had some problems with windows doing something to a a usb drive & i could never safely remove it
Hi Theo -
I've been aware of this issue for many years and I always have "safely removed my hardware" because I treat the drive data as if it was the most valuable resource I have - because it was created with that most valuable resource we all posses - TIME! The problem I run into is occasionally I'll be told by Windows that the drive is busy, when I know it's not, because I just wrote to it with the one and only program I was using - a video editor - that has not only finished updating, but that I have closed!?!?
Now, I've only found one work-around, as opposed to just proceeding with the unplug anyways, and that's to initiate a defrag/trim on the drive? Now if it's a trim, implying SSD, then it's quick. But if it's a defrag on a non-SSD drive, it can sometimes be a ridiculous wait!
Any suggestions?
Paul M.
Atlanta, GA
It could also happen whent he file transfer is finsihed and you immediately unplugged the drive as i experienced it myself 4:13
I have a drive that always shows this error when I plug it into one computer, but never shows the error when I plug it into my other computer. I have no idea why.
I always thought it was that Windows found something that actually works and decided that they needed to "fix" it.
lol ... yeah, I think that all the time ... they're often trying to fix stuff, and confusing me in the process! Staying on Windows 10, not moving to 11, but they're trying to sneakt hings in ...
Can you make a video booting into a refs drive and test it? They made this possible in the recent 24h2 versions
I want to know why I usually have to eject the drive more than once to get the "safe to remove" message. I assume something is accessing it, but Resource Monitor/Disk tab doesn't show anything on that drive.
The most frustrating part about "eject" is when Windows refuses to let you do so. When I say "eject", I'm doing the computer a favor in warning it that I'm about to pull the plug. I'm not asking for Windows' permission. 😂 Some programs (even Explorer itself sometimes) keeps an open handle to the drive that produces this whole "I'm not gonna let you" effect when trying to eject - when there is absolutely no actual activity taking place.
I go by the "you get one chance" rule. If I click Eject and it gives me any lip, that's the chance. Yoink. And it serves me well, as I rarely see this message. But it is sure nice to know why it comes up.
"Dirty Bit!" Windows favorite feature for external storage drives. :)
Windows: There is an error in your USB drive.
Grayson: Scan the drive.
Windows: No errors found.
Yeah. Welcome to the world of "dirty bits." :)
But what about if it says Incert A Disk Into (Drive) How do you fix that? I got a OLD 80 GB external and whenever I plug it in it does know it's there and show a drive letter but asks me to incert a Disk Into it.
I try to eject a USB drive and it keeps telling me it is not safe because some program is still using it. I close all programs and it still gives the warning. All I can do is Restart or Shutdown. Why?
possibles: is Windows Explorer open and displaying contents of the drive?
open Task Manager and kill tasks one at a time testing each time to see if you can eject the drive..this may give a clue of which task is holding the drive