I have used 3 approaches to try and find what's triggering the "Can't stop your drive because it's in use" error message with my new WD external hard drive.
LockHunter found nothing
Nothing returns in Resource Monitor or Associated Handles searching for E:\
Nothing returns in Process Explorer searching for E:\
Recycle bin is empty
The only active apps I have open are Chrome, Word, and Excel. I don't have so much as an Explorer window open regarding this drive. This is driving me nuts because I have no choice but to let this hard drive run 24/7 until I get this resolved. Please help! What could be causing this?
2 Answers
SOLVED: Thanks to all for the help here and on r/DataHoarder. I wasn't logged into OneDrive and Google Sync wasn't targeted to that drive, but I ended both processes and now my external has been freed. Guess one of those was the culprit!
A couple of likely candidates are:
- Virusscanner, especially the realtime scanner/monitor
- Other anti-malware software running in the background
- Windows Search service
- 3rd party search indexer that is running in the background (including media-player applications that build a "media library" of your movies and songs)
- Backup software configured to make a backup to that disk. I have seen some cases of such software locking the target-disk until the backup is done (which isn't helpful if the backup is scheduled to happen several days in the future).
Some of these, especially the anti-virus/anti-malware, may not show in a normal way because they hook deep in the system.
Anyway, regardless of what is causing it: Shutting the computer down will also stop the blocking software, so you can disconnect the drive safely. There is no need whatsoever to keep it running permanently.
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