Fix ‘This drive is currently in use’

Connect the drive, or any drive or USB, to your system. Open Disk Management by
searching for it in Windows Search typing diskmgmt.msc With the app open, right-
click the title of the drive on the left and select Properties from the context menu.

Go to the Policies tab. Assuming you’re running Windows 10 1809 (the latest build at
present), the Quick Removal policy should be selected by default. Change it to the
Better Performance policy and restart your system when prompted.

After you restart your system, repeat all of the above steps but change the Removal
Policy back to ‘Quick Removal’. Again, restart your system.

After this, when you next try to remove an external drive or USB by stopping it first,
Windows 10 will be able to stop it and allow you to remove it safely.
It isn’t necessary to revert the Removal Policy to Quick Removal. That’s just the default
for Window 10 1809, If you prefer to keep the policy set to Better Performance, you can.
The trick to fixing this little bug is to change the removal policy to anything that isn’t the
current one, and restarting your system. For some odd reason, that tends to fix the
problem.