Safely Remove Hardware?

C

Carlosinfl

Loves the juice
Joined
Sep 25, 2002
Messages
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I was just curios how many of you folks safely remove hardware from Windows?

I always just pull the flash drive or usb device out and was wondering if this is bad for the device or the system?
 
when i use my usb flash drives in windows 2000, if i don't use the "safely remove hardware" function from the task bar any files i had copied to the drive always seem to be gone when i plug it in somewhere else. when i do remove it "safely", the files are there with no problems.

the only issue i have really seen in XP is when i use removeable hard drives. on occasion event viewer will kick out some warnings about not finishing cache synchronization before the device was removed. but that's about it, i have never had any file corruption due purely to removing the device without using the "safely remove" feature. that being said, it's probably wise to use it in good practices to prevent potential problems.
 
I always use safely, because 1 (ONE!!) time I forgot to do it and it had corrupted the whole damn USB key drive. I had to re-format the thing to use it right again, lol.
 
Well, I have been known to just yank out my flash drive on occasion, but I avoid it whenever possible. One of the guys that I go to school with lost his entire Visual Basic project when he just yanked it out. I allways use the remove option with my external hard drive. I don't want to take any chance that it will be fubar'ed!
 
I have safely removed hardware maybe 3 times in the past 5 years. And twice was yesterday because I was using someone elses flash drive. :D

My recommendation is if you're using a storage device, it's best to use the safely remove function. If it's anything else, it doesn't matter 99% of the time, from my experience anyway.
 
I wait for the light to stop blinking for a bit, then yank it out.

no problems after one year
 
In Windows 2000 Write Caching is enabled by default for removable drives. With this enabled, not all changes to the data on a removable drive is immediately written to the drive. They are cached and then written later. Using "Safely Remove Hardware" forces Windows to flush the write cache out to the drive thus making it safe to unplug.

Windows XP on the otherhand DISABLES Write Caching by default. Any changes done to the data on the drive are immediately written to it. You do NOT have to use the Safely Remove Hardware wizard. Wait until the activity light on your drive stops blinking, its then safe to unplug.

Windows 98 and Me also disable Write Caching by default for Removable drives. You don't have to stop or eject the drive in these OSes ethier.
 
thanks stevewm, i always wondered why that was. i guess i just assumed that since windows 2000 had the "safely remove" function, it also by defauly changed the performance vs quick removal setting in the device's property sheet, which of course changes the caching functions on the storage device.
 
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