If you have a removable USB drive, it is important that you safely remove it using the icon shown in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. This will ensure that any files saved to the drive have actually been written to the drive before it is removed, preventing the data from becoming corrupt.
However, occasionally the removal icon goes missing. If that happens, you can still safely remove your drive by creating a desktop shortcut as follows:
- Right-click on a blank area of your desktop and select New > Shortcut from the pop-up menu.
- Enter the following command into the Location field: %windir%\ system32\RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll
- Click Next and enter a name for the shortcut, such as Safely remove hardware.
- Click on Finish.