As we all know, it is highly suggested to remove the external device from computer with the “Safe to Remove Hardware” option. This post will tell you what will occur if a USB flash drive is not ejected safely.
USB flash drive has been used by a great amount of users due to its portability. To access it, you need to connect it with your computer, which is blazing easy. Yet, when using a USB flash drive, you may make a critical mistake. You may be used to unplugging the drive without using the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon. In this case, sometimes, if you’re lucky enough, nothing wrong will occur and everything works fine. But, there are also some chances that you would be subject to some issues, such as data corruption, such as PST corruption. In the followings, we will expose the common risks if you don’t remove a USB flash drive safely as well as the safe methods on different systems.
Serious Risks:
1. Data Corruption
When you’re transferring files between your computer and USB flash drive, if the drive isn’t removed safely, it is very likely that the file being transferred would be corrupted. Moreover, such corrupted files are far more difficult to be recovered than regular deleted files. Since at times, the USB flash drive may be still running or being used in the background, so as to prevent data corruption, you should use the “Safe to Remove Hardware” option when ejecting USB flash drive. In this way, if the drive is being used, you will get warned.
2. Harm Drive Performance
Aside from file corruption, removing your USB flash drive unsafely will make bad impact on the drive performance. Although such symptom will not be apparently visible at once, with time going on, you would find that the drive becomes slower than before. Such a problem occurs from cache memory creation in USB. As long as you connect the USB drive with your computer, the computer system creates a cache of USB. As USB flash drive requires constant power supply to processing all operations, sudden removing it will lead to performance degradation.
Safe Methods:
1. on Windows System
- First off, locate and click on the “Safe to Remove Hardware” icon in the right bottom corner of the Windows task bar.
- Then, from the available device list, hit the USB flash drive option.
- If you see the “Safe to Remove Hardware”, you can eject the USB drive now.
2. on Mac System
- In the first place, drag the USB flash drive icon in “Trash”.
- Then, in the “Finer” pane, click the eject icon beside the drive.
Author Introduction:
Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including repair mdf and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com