Frequently Asked Questions

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Sales questions

I have purchased a one or two year license, do I need to purchase a new one when it expires?

No, you don't have to purchase a new license. These licenses are allowing you to get upgrades and technical support within one or two years after the purchase date. On the term's expiration you can stay with the latest version forever. You can even install it on your new PCs or just reinstall with your license key. There are two limitations of that expired key: no upgrades and no technical support.

When you decide you need a fresh version you can any time purchase the renewal at a discounted price

License with lifetime upgrades provides you all future upgrades and technical support for free.

How many computers can I install the program with one license?

With the personal license you can install and use the program personally on each of your PCs, including your working one.

When do I need a commercial license?

A commercial license required only in a case when you need to have the program on several working seats in a company. If you just need the program on your home and work PC, consider purchasing a personal license.

I have lost my license key, can I restore it?

Yes, you can do it for free, just visit our restore license key service.

Common questions

What's the difference between USB Safely Remove and native Windows safe removal?

What's the difference between USB Safely Remove and Zentimo xStorage Manager?

Zentimo xStorage Manager is our another program with some advanced features over USB Safely Remove, find the differences here: Zentimo vs USB Safely Remove.

Why do I need your program when I can setup "Optimize for quick removal" option and just pull devices out?

  1. Sure you can do this in case of such simple devices like jump drives. They are optimized for quick removal and it's quite unlikely that something happens with them. But even in this case no one guarantees you weren't pulled the device out while a background program is writing an information to it. So if you are absolutely sure in what you are doing you can just pull the jump drives and similar devices down. But if you want to avoid any possible data losses it's better to use safe removal.
  2. An external hard drive is a more complex device which includes more controlling chips (comparing to flash drive), has moving mechanical parts and no one knows what will happen to the drive if you constantly pull it out. It is similar to shutting down the computer by pulling out the cable from the socket or disconnecting the battery from the laptop. Therefore even manufacturers of hard drives (e.g. Seagate) recommend to disconnect external hard drives using Safely Remove Hardware icon.
  3. Besides USB Safely Remove offers significant benefits for active use of external devices even you don't need Safely Remove Hardware. Thanks to its convenient and feature-wise menu the program lets you navigate better in the devices when there several ones on the list, can manage drive letters, hide empty drives of card readers, can run programs on device connection\disconnection and many more.

Technical questions

How to upgrade the program? Do I need to uninstall the previous version?

No you don't need to uninstall the previous version. Just download the latest version and run the installer, it will do upgrade automagically.

The program cannot stop my external drive, it's telling there's 'system' process locking it

In some rare cases even our program cannot stop a device. The native Safely Remove Hardware also cannot stop this device and there are actually no processes that are preventing the drive from removal. The "System" process and such files as displayed on the image above is just a consequence of the NTFS (file system) support mechanism working activity that keeps these files open forever even when you can stop the device without problems. We suppose this issue is actually a bug in Windows implementation of USB device support and at the moment we cannot overcome it. Besides such problems might be caused:
  • By some thirdparty low-level software installed on your computer such as antivirus or backup tool
  • By a malfunctioned USB device or USB concentrator which this device is connected to, or lack of correctly installed USB support drivers

What's USBSRService.exe process (USB Safely Remove assistance service)?

As it's said on the tin this is an assistance service for USB Safely Remove. It's responsible for some low level activities such as finding locking processes, managing letters etc. This a passive service it doesn't do anything on its own, it only does things when the main program asks it.
We strongly recommend to never stop this service manually. If you need to avoid any influence on USB devices e.g. when you update firmware on your external device just exit from the main program by right clicking to its system tray icon and choosing "Exit" in the menu. The service will stay in memory though it will not influence devices or performance of the system.

I cannot download the program from your web-site, it's always download broken

It seems you had connection problems while downloading first time and the broken file was cached by your browser. Try to clear the cache of your browser and then download the program once again. Read more on how to clear the browser cache.

Why is there an exclamation mark in Device Manager appeared since installation of your program?

Actually it's not an error. With this exclamation sign Windows notifies you that the following drives don't have a drive letter assigned to them. From Windows point of view it's strange that a drive doesn't have a letter assigned to it because you may not access the drive's content without letter. But here we have USB Safely Remove that automatically manages letters of unused card reader slots: it removes them when the slots are empty and assign the letter back when it find a memory card attached to the slot. So you shouldn't worry about these exclamation signs. If you wish to avoid these exclamation signs for some reason you can disable the option "Hide drive letters when there are no media inserted" located in the "Settings" -> "Drive Letters" tab.

My computer is no longer seeing a device after installation of your program

USB Safely Remove doesn't install drivers and doesn't interfere the normal work of USB devices or the system, therefore its work cannot be the reason of your USB device or USB controller failure. It's much much more likely that the reason of the issue is one of the following:
  • Installation of some low-level software (e.g. backup, antivirus or a kind of USB protection tools)
  • Incorrect work of USB drivers (Try to reinstall drivers of your USB controller or motherboard)
  • Hardware failure of your USB device or USB controller. Try your USB device on another computer and if it also cannot be seen it's problem of the device, otherwise it's a problem of your USB controller

The program constantly reconnects my device

USB Safely Remove only notifies you about disconnection or insertion of external devices and never does such actions without your direct command. If you see that a device is reconnected several times it might mean that either your device or USB hub (motherboard) or drivers are functioning inappropriately. If this is the only device with such behavior and all other devices connected to this USB port don’t have such problem it means that this device has some hardware problems and you should replace it or bring it to the repair service. If other devices connected to this port also being connected\disconnected without your intention it means that there's a problem with your USB controller (motherboard) or its drivers. You can try to reinstall drivers and if it doesn't help we can recommend to bring your computer to the repair service.

The program doesn't show my system SATA drive

Why do you need to see your system drive among the list of removable drives?

USB Safely Remove is no longer displaying system drives even if they are connected through internal SATA or USB interfaces. It's done intentionally because you cannot stop such drives, and there's no reason to keep them on the list of removable drives. Furthermore an attempt to unlock processes locking the system drive or changing the system drive's letter will lead to the system crash.

The program displays my internal SATA drive

USB Safely Remove lists all SATA and USB devices except the system (the drive where OS is installed) even if they are built in into your computer, because it's impossible for the program to distinguish its physical location. However you can hide these devices from the menu. Just right click to a device and select "Hide device from the tray menu" menu item. Read more on this topic.

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