Many USB devices are listed as USB Mass Storage Device in Windows which makes it extremely difficulty to distinguish between those devices.

The above screenshot visualizes the problems that many users have when trying to disconnect one of their devices from the PC system. It would help if Windows would offer the option to hide certain devices that a user does not want to disconnect from the computer but that option is not given as well.

USB Safely Remove deals with that problem and many more that users experience when dealing with USB devices. One major change is that the software program will display the actual names of the devices instead of USB Mass Storage Device which makes it much easier to identify the right device. Even better; It also displays a drive icon in the dialog so that items can be visually distinguished as well.

But USB Safely Remove provides access to additional options besides the very handy USB identification. Computer users can rename devices and change the device icons which might be helpful if multiple devices of the same type or of the same developer are connected to a PC. It can also hide devices so that they do not appear in the removal dialog window at all, great for storage devices that should keep the connection at all times.

Users who prefer to use the computer keyboard can utilize keyboard shortcuts to browse a drive’s contents, stop a device or activate a device again that has not been removed from the system yet. Available are one global shortcut and device specific shortcuts.

Sometimes USB devices cannot be disconnected from the PC which can usually be attributed to a process that is locking a file on the USB drive (e.g. a program that has been executed on the USB drive). USB Safely Remove will provide extensive information about the processes and files that prevent that the USB device can be stopped.

Five Options are provided in the cannot stop device window:

• To know what processes prevent the device from being stopped
• To stop the device again – the program tries ejecting the device once again. You have to close all listed processes or files opened by them beforehand.
• To forcibly stop the device – the program closes all files opened by the listed processes on the device, leaving all the processes running and tries stopping the device again.
• To close the processes and stop the device again – the program closes all listed processes and tries stopping the device again.
• To know what files opened the process – just press “+” sign before file name and you will find out what certain files opened the process

Another interesting option that USB Safely Remove offers is the ability to run programs after connecting a device, before or after stopping the device and after removing it from the system.

This offers a lot of possibilities like running the encryption software True-Crypt when a device gets connected, a data backup or file synchronization before the device gets stopped.

Other features of USB Safely Remove include:

• Command Line tool to work with the program from the command line
• Automatically hide empty drives
• Ejecting memory cards
• Returning devices back after they have been stopped without physically reconnecting the device first.

Christmas Giveaway

We have 20 licenses of USB Safely Remove. Just leave a comment below which will automatically include you in the draw.

Raju us giving away 10 WinRar licenses.

USB Safely Remove is a USB device manager that can be run on 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. USB devices like removable hard drives, memory sticks or even connected digital cameras become increasingly common but Microsoft failed to add the means to manage the devices effectively. The software program works basically with any hot-plug devices like USB, SATA, Firewire or PCMCIA devices.

One of the problems that Windows users might encounter is that most devices that get connected to the computer will use the name USB mass storage device. That makes it difficulty to safely unplug a specific device from the computer system. There is also no option to hide important devices that (never) get disconnected from the system.

USB Safely Remove provides an easier way to manage the devices in Windows. It uses and displays the actual device names & icons and offers ways to rename devices, change device icons and hide devices from the removal menu. A single hotkey can be used to navigate the menu and safely remove or open the device.

This is however just one function of the software. Another annoying Windows feature is that every card reader slot will be assigned to a drive letter which can easily mean that four or even more device letters are taken by card reader slots that are rarely if any in use. USB Safely Remove can be used to hide empty card reader slots automatically. There is also the option to eject cards directly from a card reader. Any process that would lock the card would be displayed so that it could be taken care of.

The reason if a device cannot be stopped on the computer system will be displayed by USB Safely Remove. It will display the running processes that lock the device so that it cannot be stopped or disabled.

It is probably a good time to explain the differences between stopping and disabling a device. Some devices cannot be stopped but only disabled in the hardware manager. USB Safely Remove automatically detects the type of drive and will stop or disable the device without making the user think about the type of device. It can also enable a disabled device at the next start of the computer system.

Programs can be started after a device gets connected to the computer and before a device gets disconnected or stopped again. One possible use for that feature would be to run the encryption software True Crypt to mount and dismount the encrypted container.

A command line version of the software program is provided as well which can be integrated in batch scripts or simply run from the command line.

One of the most interesting features of USB Safely Remove is the ability to start a stopped device. Without the software one would have to unplug the cable of the device and plug it back in so that Windows recognized it again. With USB Safely Remove it is just a matter of selecting the feature in the right-click menu of the application.

The USB software manager comes with several additional features like the ability to mount storage devices as NTFS folders, managing of drive letters or preventing Windows from assigning specific drive letters to devices.

The software developer created a unique url which can be used to request a serial number for the software program. This url is good for today only which is why we decided to publish the Giveaway right now and not at the usual time.