Comments on: Removing An External Device Safely

By: Tony londra

Tony londra — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 12:09:03 +0000

Thanks for sharing this post is really great for business and student. We store and safe for huge important data. Removing an external device safely is great.

By: Chinaren

Chinaren — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:17:48 +0000

Lol! Well, to be fair the 486 was only my first PC!

My first computer worthy of the name, at least 10 years previous, was a Sharp MZ80k, with a massive 48Kilobytes* of RAM, a 10″black and white screen and a built in tape deck. I had a version of BASIC on tape, which I loaded in as an OS.

Pretty cool that thing was.

*Which was massive at the time, really.

By: Chinaren

Chinaren — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:44:37 +0000

Yep, pulling it out is really not going to damage the hardware. The problem may be when they’ve pulled it out when it’s still writing to the device. If it’s just sitting there idle, there should be no problem.

By: EdZee

EdZee — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 06:50:27 +0000

Thank you, Neo. I said that in the article but many customers in i-cafés may not know nor notice that; hence, my advice to put a shortcut on the desktop. If an i-café have such shortcut on their workstations, the customer cannot say that it’s the fault of the establishment if they lose their data or their USB drives get broken for not removing them safely.

By: Neo

Neo — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 06:24:40 +0000

Well after I insert my USB in my PC it gives a small icon the system tray in the bottom right corner and after I am finished using it I just right click and then do safely remove hardware

By: dodimar

dodimar — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:18:15 +0000

Yup… Honestly, though my settings for usb drives are on non-caching mode. I always do a safe removal. I use a software USB Disc Ejector since sometimes I have multiple USB drives plugged in at the same time.

By: EdZee

EdZee — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:30:41 +0000

Thank you very much for the information, dodimar. Not knowing whether the device is set for quick removal, it is still better to go through the procedure to make sure that data will not be lost. Anyway, as I said, better safe than sorry.

By: dodimar

dodimar — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:57:39 +0000

The reason, based on my studies, for the option to "safely remove hardware" is because of caching. There is actually a setting on the hardware properties to either "Optimize for Quick Removal". This setting will disable write caching on the drive (USB drive if in case), so you can disconnect the device without using the Safe Removal icon (copied from the description of the option). If this is the setting for your USB drives, then, there is no need to do a Safely Remove this Device. However, if the option selected is "Optimize for Performance", then write caching is enabled. And you have to do safe removal before unplugging the USB drive. With caching, data is not immediately written on the storage device. So unplugging without doing safe removal will / may result to loss of data. But it will never cause any problem on the drive itself (hardware). The only thing that will be affected is the data/storage and it will not destroy your USB storage. .-= dodimar´s last blog ..Breaking Point =-.