2007-11-06 13:05:19 · 10 answers · asked by aleja113 2 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Add-ons
There is no physical danger from removing a USB disk without stopping it. USB was designed to be hot swappable.
So why do you need to stop the USB disk?
One, is that you have open files that you haven't saved. It is a just a safe way to prevent accidental loss of these files. Or perhaps a program is use a file from the USB disk, and as it is in use, it is not a good idea to remove the disk (even though no data would be lost, the program will stop working properly)
Modern computers and operating systems use little tricks to make them run faster. One way is that when you write to a disk, you don't write to it right away. Rather it is in the computers memory (which is fast) then send over to the disk. This means the write process might not be 100% finished.
Sometimes you have everything closed, and saved but Windows says it can't stop the device as files are in use. Removing the disk is unlikely to create any problems, just check to make sure before doing anything (for example, Microsoft Word will often mark a file as in use, then fail to mark it as no longer in use even though it has finished with it).
Oh and occasionally the incorrect removable of a USB 2.0 (not USB 1.0) device will cause the openning a rift in space and time allowing demons to cross into our world and take control of your CPU (I believe USB 3.0 will fix this problem, but it hasn't stop ID games using this problem as the plot point for the next version of DOOM)
2007-11-06 13:19:38 · answer #1 · answered by flingebunt 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Nothing really. As long as its not currently working. If your printer is printing, and you pull out the USB right away, bad things happen. That also goes for memory USB flash drives. Just make sure you've finished transferring data before taking it off. The "Safely remove" option does what it says it does... "safely remove". Of course, if you take it for granted, you might end up with corrupt data. So just make sure the "attached" USB is not working on anything before "manually" pulling it out. Good Luck
2016-05-28 05:05:30 · answer #2 · answered by ? 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Corrupt the file system on the USB drive making all the files on the USB drive unreadable without special recovery software.
2007-11-06 13:20:34 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Nothing really. Flash drives were designed to be just plugged in and pulled right out. Like the guy above me said, copy your files to the computer hard drives.
2007-11-06 13:13:25 · answer #4 · answered by MuRcIElaGo 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Honestly, none, unless you are working on files directly from your flash drive which is just a bad thing by itself. (always drag the files over somewhere on the hard disk, do your work, save them, drag them back) ...
So, other than losing your file information due to your own misstake of not saving, none.
2007-11-06 13:11:01 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The data/files in it will be erased or you wont be able to read your USB flash drive (which will force you to format it eventually leading to loss of data).
2007-11-06 13:14:09 · answer #6 · answered by marsulein 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
your files might get corrupted and in certain case the USB drive has to be formatted.
2007-11-06 13:15:57 · answer #7 · answered by badtissue 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The danger is somewhere between minimal and non-existent.
2007-11-06 13:13:11 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
just make SURE that all files are saved and exited and ur golden
2007-11-06 13:10:43 · answer #9 · answered by wht_fool 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
you may loose any info on it!
2007-11-06 13:09:40 · answer #10 · answered by scarekro 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋