Safely removing hardware from USB

[123456]

Whenever you plug into USB with Windows, you get a nice little green/grey hardware remove icon in your start toolbar. When you hover over it it says "Safely remove hardware" as seen here:

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/moody07747/Other/Computer/hardwareremove.jpg


Now I used to just unplug my things from USB until my brother told me not to do that when he saw. A few of his friends at school used to have problems with their flash drive or card reader and didn't know why until they found out that they were just shorting them out by unplugging them without the remove procedure.

Now whenever unplugging any hardware from USB I use the "Safely remove hardware" button.

My sister has been unplugging her camera and iPod without going though this procedure and she wont believe me when I say it can break the electronics...

I'm just wondering if anyone has any website(s) I can show here or email to her showing that this should be done.

Thanks,
Dave

[Kiros]

Well, I cannot direct you to any websites that have that kind of information in it - I don't know of one off the top of my head. However, I can assure you that one should always use this procedure, as it shuts down connections drivers and applications that expect 100% use of that device to be achieved (if the driver/application requires it). If the program does not get a connection with the device, it might recognize the device as being corrupt - such as corrupt digital memory for a camera. Another instance where this is important would be when defragmenting data on mass storage devices. If you just unplug it when that's going on, then you can seriously mess up the data stored on the device, while if you go through the safety procedure, it can either warn you that it cannot stop the process currently (so you must wait) or it will pause it as soon as possible, then continue to stop it, and then disconnect the device from the defragmenting process. That way, nothing will be damaged.

If you sister doesn't want to, I suppose she really doesn't have to, but it could severely corrupt stored data on her USB devices.

[mr. self destruct]

yes, always use that when you unplug something.
I remember one time I unplugged an external hard drive without Safely Removing the hardware, and when i plugged it in again, I had to reformat it.

[Blahages]

It depends on the Device. If you're using a Flash Drive or Other Flash Memory Device, there's usually no need to use the Safely Remove Hardware. I've never seen any problem with this.

HOWEVER if you're using a USB Hard Drive, or basically, anything that has moving parts, you should always use the Safely Remove Hardware. The HDD will have disks spinning, and if you just randomly unplug it, it could result in data corruption since it's not allowing it to safely spindown the device.

That's my rule of thumb. If it has moving parts, use the Safely remove Hardware thingy. If it doesn't, there's no need.

Never had a problem.

Anyone using Mac or Linux will want to tell the Device to Unmount/Eject, though, because as far as I'm aware, neither will write to the device until it's been told to unmount. At least, Flash drives don't with Linux by default. I've been told the same about OSx. So, if you don't tell it to unmount, you'll likely lose all information you've written to it since you plugged it in.

[Kiros]

I don't know if it would still be safe just because the device doesn't have moving parts. I remember that my friend's flash drive (2GB) had to be reformatted because we just pulled it out like we always did. It didn't have any (noticeable) activity on it while we were unplugging it, yet doing so corrupted it enough for it to not have a recognizable format :|

[Blahages]

I don't know if it would still be safe just because the device doesn't have moving parts. I remember that my friend's flash drive (2GB) had to be reformatted because we just pulled it out like we always did. It didn't have any (noticeable) activity on it while we were unplugging it, yet doing so corrupted it enough for it to not have a recognizable format :|

Well, I mean, it couldn't hurt to use the Safely remove, I was just saying that I've never seen a problem with it. It's more of an annoyance then anything for me. I have 4 different USB Flash drives (3 Now, one died due to me leaving it plugged in for like 3 months at a time, and going through the wash 2-3 times) that have been written to and unplugged countless times without using that, and haven't seen any problems. :)

As long as it's not in the process of Writing Data to the Drive, there's little chance of any corruption.

[123456]

I don't know if it would still be safe just because the device doesn't have moving parts. I remember that my friend's flash drive (2GB) had to be reformatted because we just pulled it out like we always did. It didn't have any (noticeable) activity on it while we were unplugging it, yet doing so corrupted it enough for it to not have a recognizable format :|

yea and my bros friends at school where using an SD card in a reader which went bad when pulled out..

same with those USB stick drives

[Blahages]

Everyone here must have some combination of Bad Luck and Fault Hardware. :P Although, with how I treat my Flash Drives, I'm suprised they haven't been corrupted. They get used all the time, and get carried with me everywhere, they've been dropped, run through the wash (Still worked except after like the 3rd time for one :)) and have never been "safely removed" and they've never had any corruption on them.

Eh. Fun.