Windows has an inbuilt feature using which you can safely remove a removable drive (for example, a USB disk drive). But this feature is pretty much limited in nature. It does not clean the MRU and registry entries created while you ran programs off the removable drive. You have to manually remove these entries or use a program like CCleaner to clean them. Now you can use freeware ProEject program to safely dismount removable drives and clean the left over entries.
ProEject is an easy to use application which allows you to safely dismount a removable drive by closing running applications and open windows, as well as clearing the registry and folders of any trace that the removable drive might have left behind. By placing ProEject on the same drive you want to eject and running, will automatically eject the drive with little fuss.
You can download ProEject from its web site at SoftwareSpot. ProEject is open source program distributed under the GPL3 license, therefore you can also download its source code if you want to. ProEject has been designed using a AutoIt script. You can also download its binary program as well. It does not require any installation – its portable. It supports all versions of Windows above Windows XP.
Using the ProEject application is very easy. It shows a window with all the drive icons in it. If you want to safely dismount a removable drive, just click on it and press the Enter key on your keyboard. You can also right-click on a drive and choose many more options under the right-click menu. You can ProEject it, Clean it, Close it or Eject it. If you select ProEject, then it automatically cleans, closes and ejects it.
If you minimize the ProEject window, it minimizes into the system tray(notification area). You can double-click on the system tray icon to show it again. You can click on the Settings to open the settings window in which you can set cleaning options, GUI preferences, exclusions and more.
You can safely eject a USB stick using the Windows safe removal feature, but if you want to do more than just ejection, then you should give ProEject a try.You can download ProEject from http://softwarespot.wordpress.com/software/proeject/.