For a while now I’ve been getting frustrated with hardly ever being able to safely remove my external USB HDD, as it was always “in use” even after closing as many applications as I could think of. However, using LockHunter (great tool) reveals the following information:
Trying to safely remove the device at this point of course gives the following message:
The first two items are windows handles that do not interfer with the safe removal process – the second two however do.
I have enjoying my use of xplorer² (lite) as a windows explorer replacement that makes life a lot easier when doing a lot of file system maintenance. However, if the last folder you have open with it was on the USB drive, then the process stays alive even after “closing” the xplorer² window (probably for faster reloading?), keeping a hold of the drive in the process. I have found that the following option however fixes this issue (if you don’t tend to use the DOS functionality):
As for ObjectDock as far as I can see the only solution to this is not to have the Recycle Bin docklet on the dock – I guess I will just have to live with it being on the desktop for now.
Sometimes it pays to just take a bit of time out to sort out the things that can frustrate you daily and you will be much better off :)