# Is it reaaaaallllly necessary to "Safely Remove" a Flashdrive?



## halcour (Mar 2, 2005)

As opposed to just pulling the darn thing out of its USB port?

Thanks,
Harold


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## Rich-M (May 3, 2006)

halcour said:


> As opposed to just pulling the darn thing out of its USB port?
> 
> Thanks,
> Harold


You know I have searched the real answer for this many times and never come up with it.
I believe you need to do that with portable drives and also with jump drives, and with so many losing data on these forums with flash drives, you really should use the "safely remove" tray icon everytime, or remove it when pc is off to be safe. if you will notice, a pc that has never used any kind of external drive, will not have the "safely remove" hardware icon in the tray, so that is my best guess.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

No, it is not "reallly necessary" to use the safely remove feature. By default USB FLASH drives are installed with write caching disabled. That means that when the activity light ceases to flash on your USB device, all the data should be written to it.

It's still good practice to use the "safely remove" process, but I know people that never use it, and they use FLASH drives every day.

This is what I see for any of my USB FLASH drive devices, I have 8-9 of them. Note that they clearly mention not using the Safe Removal process.


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## crjdriver (Jan 2, 2001)

You will not hurt the device by removing it without using the "safely remove hardware" icon. What that actually does is flush the cache and insure that all data is written to the device. If you just wait a min or so after using it, all data will be written.

USB devices are designed to be "hot plugged" so you will not hurt it by removing it.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

The data should be written as fast as the device accepts it, since there is no write caching. Of course, with some FLASH devices, that can take a minute or two.


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## Rich-M (May 3, 2006)

Thanks crj and JW, I have never really known that answer but what you say makes perfect sense


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

It's actually what Microsoft said.


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## dobbelina (Apr 5, 2005)

I guess all arguments here hold tight, as long as you don't unplug it while it's writing.


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## Mulderator (Feb 20, 1999)

I've never used the Safely Remove Icon and never had a problem. Although I don't use flash drives, typically I have a digital camera attached.


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## Aussie John (Mar 20, 2006)

i somtimes have a problem with my modem freezing and have to switch it off and restart it. i somtimes forget to do it the safe way. could that cause a problem?


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## halcour (Mar 2, 2005)

My Sandisk flash drive doesn't have the "quick removal" option in Properties and the light is on the whole time it's plugged in, whether I'm writing to it or not. But the consensus seems to be it's safe enough after you've finished working w/it. Thanks for the info.

H


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Aussie John said:


> i somtimes have a problem with my modem freezing and have to switch it off and restart it. i somtimes forget to do it the safe way. could that cause a problem?


There's nothing in the modem that will be corrupted if you yank the cord out. Windows might complain about it, but it won't hurt anything. My HP PSC-750 doesn't have the "Safely Remove" option, and Windows complains every time I turn it off. It's been doing that since the printer was new.


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## Aussie John (Mar 20, 2006)

thank you John Will i was worried i could cause a problem with it.


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