When I shut down or restart Windows 10 Pro it always pauses and lists one or two storage drives and says that the drive preventing shutdown. It's always the same one or two of my many storage drives and when this happens neither of these drives is active. One is an internal HDD and the other is a USB thumb drive.
1 Answer
A storage device is not an application. The message is telling you that the drives are in use because all writes from buffer to storage are incomplete, or because an application (e.g., Windows Defender or Search Indexer) is using the drive.
To find out what process is locking the USB or HDD, use a third-party tool such as Crystal Rich's free LockHunter.
Also, be sure the Quick Removal policy is set for removable drives, though that does not apply to an internal SSD.
answered May 4, 2021 at 17:36
