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flash drives

 
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flash drives
tootintorrey
post 22 Apr, 2008 - 02:35 PM
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when you go to remove a flash drive from a usb port should you always go to safely remove hardware? Cuz i usually just gank it out and get on with my day but was recently told no dont do that youll wipe the drive.
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Mikhail
post 22 Apr, 2008 - 02:38 PM
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Wrong forum, should be in Computer Supports & Operating Systems, and No it wont wipe your drive.
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ferrari12508
post 22 Apr, 2008 - 03:21 PM
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Well if you have something unsaved open, it will be erased, but i normally just take my drive out because apparently trying to safely remove a flash drive at my school is considered hacking
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KYA
post 22 Apr, 2008 - 04:29 PM
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It may be a problem is you're streaming something to it, but just yank that sucker out of there!
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pertheusual
post 22 Apr, 2008 - 04:38 PM
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Usually it doesn't matter. The main issue is if you save something on it right before you pull it out.
When you save files on most OS's, there is a little bit of lag where the data sits in your RAM but doesn't get written to the actual drive even though it looks like the file is there.

Doing "Safely Remove" basically makes the OS flush any caches of data that need to be written. So if you are just reading from the drive, then it doesn't matter, but if you are saving files and stuff, it can be bad to pull it out.

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spearfish
post 22 Apr, 2008 - 05:55 PM
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:nods at all previous answers:

:nods at all previous answers:
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mikeblas
post 22 Apr, 2008 - 08:06 PM
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It won't exactly wipe your drive, but it is very likely to corrupt individual files and could possibly corrupt the file system. You're playing Russian Roulette with your data each time you remove without ejecting.
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tootintorrey
post 23 Apr, 2008 - 12:29 PM
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alright kool.
my bad on putting in the wrong forum i didnt see the rest of those at the bottom of the list.
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RodgerB
post 26 Apr, 2008 - 02:01 AM
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As long as you don't have write caching enabled it should be safe to just yank your USB flash disk out. Write caching is disabled by default on removable hard drives for this very reason, because people are lazy. When write caching is disabled data is directly written to the storage device.

If write caching is enabled, data will be sent to a queue in the RAM where it will then perform a cache flush and write everything onto the drive when the system isn't busy, or it has exceeded a maximum time interval where it forces a cache flush.

All the Safely Remove hardware option does is perform a cache flush, much as pertheusual has already said.
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mikeblas
post 28 Apr, 2008 - 07:12 AM
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Un-flushed writes are note the only threat when a device is removed from the system. Even with delayed writes turned off, a program may be in the middle of writing to a file at the moment that the device is removed. If one write succeeds and another fails, the data left in the file might be left in an inconsistent state, rendering the file unusable by the programs that try to read it.

Using the "safely remove hardware" feature flushes pending writes, but also gracefully stops access to the drive. The feature causes the system to see if any applications have files open on the drive, and will indicate to the user that removal of the device is not appropriate until those files are closed.
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