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Thread ID: 89302 2008-04-27 01:41:00 Win XP SP1 & 2GB USB Drives Peter Mundy (7113) Press F1
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662959 2008-04-27 01:41:00 Sunday, 27 April 2008 12:36:p.m.

Can anyone help give a defining answer on an apparently simple problem??

1) Must you always use the "safely remove hardware" option before removing a small USB flash drive?
2) If not , when and under what conditions?
3) If you don't use the "safely remove hardware" option then which device is liable to be damaged, the computer or the USB drive or both?

All the best and thanks for any expert guidance on this.

:thanks :thanks
Peter Mundy (7113)
662960 2008-04-27 01:51:00 1) I never use the "Safely Remove Hardware" option with my USB drives

2) If you are doing backups of valuable data to a USB drive it would probably be a good idea to use it

3) The damage that can be done is corrupt data on the USB drive. If you just remove it it may still have been reading or writing to the drive and can cause data corruption. If you use the "Safely Remove Hardware" option then Windows won't let you remove it if the USB drive is still busy
CYaBro (73)
662961 2008-04-27 01:54:00 The usb drive would probably stuff up if you dont use it

As it says once you plug the usb drive in (under device manager / policies tab)

Optimise for quick removal

This option write caching on the disk and in windows, so you can disconnect the drive without using the safe removal icon

Or optimize for performance

This option enables write caching in windows to provide disk performance

Thats when you use the safely remove hardware option

Altho some can also be ejected in my computer
Speedy Gonzales (78)
662962 2008-04-27 02:46:00 I usually just disconnect mine (on XP) without using the safely remove hardware option. Older OSes I use the safely remove hardware option.

In saying that I have all my USB mass storage devices optimised for quick removal. Once I didn't have it set to this and got a delayed write failure which corrupted all data I had copied that time...
The_End_Of_Reality (334)
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