Flash Drive removal

yaggayagga Havn't you heard? ... New
edited May 2005 in Hardware
I just got a usb flash drive, you know one of those keychain thingys. Anyway, should I worry about windows saying I improperly removed the device, and is there anyway to make connecting/disconnecting easier. What I mean is with less steps, because it warns me with 2 icons at the bottom right about a new device and then it either warns me about disconnecting it too much, or I have to click too many things to "safely have removen it." I kind of figured that when I got it I could just plug it in and see the drive appear and access it and disconnect it and not see it anymore, without windows thinking it needs to control my life with annoyances. It works that simply on macs, I've tried :p . This is one thing I am taking sides with Macintosh.

Comments

  • LINLIN Tri_State Area
    edited April 2005
    Important: while USB devices are "hot swappable", and plugging them in or removing them with the power on will not damage the hardware, it is possible, especially for disk drives, to corrupt the data on the drive if you remove it at the wrong time. In the notification are of your taskbar you should see an icon that, when you hover the mouse over it, is called "safely remove hardware". Click on that, select the device you wish to remove, and Windows will do things like flush the disk buffers and ensure that, from the operating system's point of view, it's safe to unplug it.
    - found at Ask Leo

    i get the same thing with my CF reader and other peripherals. i don't mind clicking to safely remove my hardware ;)


    LIN
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited April 2005
    You shouldn't suffer any problems from removing it without doing the whole stop device route. As long as you are accessing the data on it at the time there shouldn't be any problems at all.
  • citrixmetacitrixmeta Montreal, Quebec Icrontian
    edited April 2005
    i guess it depends on the brand\type of media you have.
    i always get corruptions if i dont use the "it's safe to unplug" feature".
  • yaggayagga Havn't you heard? ... New
    edited April 2005
    pny 1GB
  • pilotwings119pilotwings119
    edited May 2005
    if its not reading/writing on the drive, and the light on the flash drive is not indicating that its doing something, then its fine to just pull it out.
  • BLuKnightBLuKnight Lehi, UT Icrontian
    edited May 2005
    I strongly recommend using the Safely Remove Hardware icon. I didn't use it when I first got my SanDisk cruiser. But, over a month period, files were corrupting and then there were problems writing to certain parts of the flash drive. I formatted the drive and that fixed everything. Now that I'm using the icon, I haven't had any problems.

    2 cents.
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