[USB] Does is really matter if you remove shit the "correct" way?

I've had a few instances where it wipes out the master boot record on it. A simple recovery does fix it.
In the linux world, even more so. But generally you're fine.
 
every time you remove a USB device without shutting it down a new robotic flying penguin is born

know this
 
the reason is whatever pending cache writes or other operations may not have completed yet and safe removal enforces this
 
i updated the siht out of my ipod (i hate apple btw the ipod is a POS) music collection and just unplugged it... it didn't keep any of my changes at all
 
So if you're not an idiot and just wait for the light to stop blinking, and even wait an extra second to be safe, then you will never have any problems.
 
So if you're not an idiot and just wait for the light to stop blinking, and even wait an extra second to be safe, then you will never have any problems.
i would say that depends entirely on the specific kind of driver the device uses

for all you know it could be writing everything to a cache on your comp and only upload the actual content every x minutes or so unless you force it by safe removal
 
i've caused irreparable damage to a USB flash drive by removing it improperly, it wasn't flashing or anything but i guess i still had shit running in the background that was going to access it

i lost a whole bunch of data, and in the end the capacity went from 4gb to ~3gb because of bad sectors (got it exchanged for a new one)

i've also seen this happen to an IDE drive in a USB enclosure

i still don't do any of the "safely remove" shit
 
Last edited:
For me, it depends on the circumstance. If all I'm doing is transferring images from an SD card, I just pull it out when it's obvious the transfer/deletion is complete. Same goes for transferring files ( to and from ).

If I'm dealing with iPod ( haven't done this in a long time ), I always make sure to 'safely' eject.
 
i never do the "safely remove hardware" thing for thumb drives but I always do it for my External backup HDs.
 
I noticed that with some SD cards, and with sansas they will get corrupted if you unplug without doing the safely remove thing, even if you wait for a long time first.

:shrug: so I always do it now, I never used to till I started getting corrupted shit. It's like 2 clicks, so whatever.
 
Just to be safe I do the eject every time. It seemed to be more problematic in the early days of usb drives than now.
 
I lost all my mp3's on an external drive one time. Couldn't get them back so had to re-rip a bunch of crap again. :hrm:

Now I always shut down the external the proper way.
 
Back
Top