Does it really matter if you use the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon to remove a flash drive?

Answer 1

One thing I can think of is that, if your machine's been busy doing a bunch of stuff, it may not have flushed all the data bound for your flash drive from the associated cache yet.

Nowadays it's really rare that any desktop operating system would perform synchronous writes to a device for performance reasons and also for compensating for the different transfer speeds and packet sizes, so typically it keeps a cache/buffer of data and uses a background task (triggered by hardware interrupts) to write the data onto your drive.

If during or before this buffer of data is completely transferred to your drive, you decide to yank out the drive, then the data on the drive can be incomplete at best and corrupted beyond repair at worst.

The chance of this happening dies down if your machine's been idling for a while since by then all the caches would've been flushed. But that's assuming that there aren't any background tasks that are operating on your drive and that the device driver is the type that flushes its cache upon idling.

So it's still a risky thing to do.

Answer 2

Yes and no. Most of the time you can pull it out no problem. Safely remove hardware prevents you from pulling the drive out while it's still in use. So if you don't use Safely Remove Hardware, you have a better chance of currupting your files and possibly causing you to reformat the drive. It take like 3 seconds so you might as well do it.

Answer 3

When WIndows is writing to an external deivce, it keeps several files and handles open to be able to faster access the device. If you remove the device without closing those files with the "safe removal", you run the risk of damaging the data on the drive. And possible even the hardware itself.

Answer 4

for me no,any way there is option to circulate with "effectively eliminate hardware" once you opt for to eliminate it or no longer. open "my computer" and good click on the flashpersistent and decide properties and then decide on "hardware" tab,a itemizing will seem pronounced as "all disk drives" and you will desire to discover the flash reminiscence in the checklist.double click on it and a sparkling window will open "generic,polices,volumes and driving force" those are the tabs attainable,decide on regulations tab and you gets 2 innovations a million-to eliminate the flash reminiscence with out utilising "effectively eliminate hardware" 2-removing flash reminiscence after utilising "effectively eliminate hardware" and that i think of that the 1st determination is the default for all USB drives like card reader or flash reminiscence,notwithstanding the "effectively eliminate hardware" nevertheless attainable in the two innovations,i mean that the computer will teach "effectively eliminate hardware" icon even the 1st determination is lively so which you would be able to forget approximately pertaining to to the icon if the 1st determination is lively.

Answer 5

It turns the connection off to the flash drive so you don't corrupt your data

Answer 6

very important.

I know alot of people who just yank out their flash drives and lost all their data.

this can also occur to external hard drives or anything else that goes through a usb connection.

Answer 7

Yes. It closes down the drive and writes.

Answer 8

I would follow the instruction. It is shown there for a good reason.

Answer 9

I would. What if you could not read your Thumb drive anymore? That could suck.

Answer 10

yes... if you dont it can mess up your flash drive