Unplugging USB devices

[ironhell]

Anybody know the reason why we should/should not bother with the clicking of the USB icon in the system tray and saying "Stop USB Mass Storage Device" (or something like it) before yanking the USB drive? Is there a point in going through this as opposed to just pulling out the USB drive without doing this (assuming we aren't accessing it of course...)?

What about conventional USB keyboards? Should we still bother with the extra step?

I am looking for some technical reason or websites that may explain to me the merits of doing this extra step.

Thanks.

 

[Ned_Flanders]

I never bother. It could be that this command finishes off read/write crap. I dunno

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[folken]

I have never bothered and it hasn't effected anything yet. If you don't like that message that comes up you can actually disable it with a thing in device manager. I can't remember where it is exactly but look at the propterties for your usb device.

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[pat]

Simple...Computer sometime create in ram a small buffer for storing information destined to the drive if it is busy and not ready to receive data or most HDD has buffer, physical memory that is erased when turned off. When clicking the little icon, you tell the computer to make sure that everything is written on the DISC and not only in the cache. Just like a printing job. The computer tell you it is done with the printing but the printer is still printing. That because the file is all in the printer buffer( cache)and no more in the computer memory. You know that the printing job is not done because you physically see it printing. but on HDD or usb memory stick, you dont know for sure that the job is done, you see nothing. This way, you dont risk to loose data not yet stored on the disc. Today system are fast enough so you dont risk to loose data very often, but it is a good habit to take in case where you are working on a file that is located on the external drive and not yet finalized, like a compressed file that it unpacking. by unplugging the drive, you risk to corrupt the file in a way you could have problems to rescue it.

so, take the habit to do that. it not too hard and could save you some trouble later.

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!