Now days we love to connect devices to our computers and laptops to transfer files to and from portable devices. This is very handy, but when you go to remove something like a small USB flash drive, sometimes it can be an annoying process.

The recommended way to remove an external device from your computer is to go the the “safely remove hardware” icon and select your device from that list.

Not only is this annoying, at times you will see a message saying that your hardware device is still in use, which will take up more time trying to figure out what is actually holding up the release of your drive.  To avoid all this time wasting, there is another option that involves a change in the properties of your device. Some people just like to simply unplug a device and for this we need to enable Quick Removal in Windows.

Enable Quick Removal For USB External Devices

Enabling quick removal should work for most modern devices and any Windows operating system after 2010. Windows actually has this setting enabled by default but it is handy to check that it is in fact enabled so you don’t corrupt files when removing a USB drive prematurely.

Please Note: I don’t use this option on my external USB hard drive as it has very important files that I want to keep safe. I don’t care how long it takes to remove that device. Quick removal for small USB drives is very handy though.

1. Go to the start menu and press on computer. You will see a box like the one below that lists all the drives either installed or connected to your computer.

2. Find the drive you want to enable Quick Removal on and right click on it.

3. A menu will appear. Choose properties from the menu.

4. The properties for the device will open. Go to the hardware tab, then choose your hardware in the list below. See the screenshot for help.

5. After selecting the right drive, click on the properties button below.

6. Click on the change settings button as shown below.

7. Go to the policies tab. There you will see two options.

Enable Quick Removal Notes

• Actually going to the trouble of using the safely remove hardware option can be good in some ways. For example if you have left a Microsoft Word doc open and not saved it, you will luckily get the message that the drive is still in use. If you rip the drive out quickly and not use this option, your file might not have save the latest version you just edited.
• Even if you enable quick removal, you can still use the “safely remove hardware” tool.
• Please note that your device will not show up in my computer if you have already used the “safely remove hardware” option or it is not plugged in at all.
• I only recommend this for USB flash drives that don’t hold life and death information.