The USB mass storage devices have become a part of our everyday lives. The USB keys now come in different shapes, sizes and forms, e.g., my friend Paul bought an 8GB USB key that is in form of a key chain. Earlier this month, I met a girl who had a cute bracelet USB key. The USB mass storage devices have gained popularity not only because of their exciting designs but also due to their affordability. These days you can get USB keys for as low as US$ 1 albeit they are not too spacious. As the use of the USB keys continues to rise, you have to be careful about using them in the right way.
When you plug-in your USB key in the computer and perform copy, move or delete operations on the files stored in the USB storage device, the USB storage may still be locked even after the file operations have completed. If you unplug the the USB key before it is completely unlocked by Windows, the files on it may become corrupt. Although Windows handles the USB storage devices very nicely, you can use the DevEject to eject the USB devices safely from Windows before un-plugging them from the USB ports.
The DevEject application is a freeware for Windows that allows you to safely eject any locked USB devices. It unlocks all the handles to the files, folders or the file system of the USB storage device before ejecting it from the Windows File Explorer.
As you start the DevEject program, it shows you a list of all the USB storage devices connected to your PC. You can select any of these devices to see more information about them. If you want to eject any of these USB devices, you can select it from the list and then click on the Eject button. If you want to see which programs are locking the USB storage devices, then after selecting it from the list, you can click on the Locks button in the DevEject window.
In the settings for DevEject (which can access by clicking on the Settings button), you can choose to start it with Windows, choose default mouse-click actions when you click on a device in the list, default action when you click on the system tray icon and so on.
Conclusion: The DevEject program makes it easy for you to eject and unplug a USB mass storage device, even when it is being used by some other program and is currently locked with them. It can quickly unlock the USB storage devices, ejects them and lets you unplug them without any worries of losing your data.
You can download the free DevEject program from http://deveject.com/.