Most of us know that we should use the "Safely Remove Device" feature in Windows before removing a flash drive (or any other type of USB device) from our computer. And most of us have probably figured out that you can simply pull the drive out and your files will still be there the next time.
If you don't know what I am talking about, each time you want to remove a USB drive (flash drive, external hard drive, etc.), Microsoft says you should go to the notification area of the taskbar (near the clock), click on the small icon that looks like a flash drive, and then select "Eject [Name of Drive]".
That brings us to the question: Is the "Safely Remove Device" feature even necessary? And the answer is: Definitely!
Yes, it is true that you can usually unplug a drive without any problem, but that is not always the case. There are many things that could be happening in the background that could harm your data if you do not use this feature. First, if the drive is in use, the files in use will most likely be corrupted. Using "Safely Remove Device" will prevent you from corrupting those files.
However, sometimes the drive will be in use when you don't realize it. The drive could be rewriting its file system (the directory of all the files on the drive). You might think it is okay to just pull the drive out because you haven't used the drive for several minutes, but if the file system is being modified and becomes corrupted when you pull the drive out, everything on the drive will be lost. Safely removing the drive will stop the rewrite at a safe place so you can remove the drive.
Second, you can enable performance features on a drive that make it even more important to use this feature. Windows can be programmed to cache data being written to a drive. This saves the data on your hard drive until Windows determines that it is best to write it to the flash drive. (This can keep your system from becoming strained by low resources or demanding programs.) While this feature is disabled by default, you probably cannot tell me for sure that caching has been disabled on your computer without checking. It is best to treat your files as safe as you can!
For these two reasons alone, it is best to always safely remove your device before you remove it. In fact, the only time you should remove a drive without this feature is if you have already shut the computer off. Otherwise, the few seconds you save by not using this feature will be more than wasted if you have to recreate all the files on the drive or spend time and/or money trying to recover data.
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