Do you "safely remove usb"?

[iisjman07]

I do on macs because they whinge at you otherwise

 

['putertutor]

Someone here has, in their signature, "Life is to short to remove safely."

I wholeheartedly believe in this statement. Of course now that I have said that, the next time I pull a usb stick out of a computer, they will both go up in smoke.

 

[Rodrick]

I've had corrupted filesystems caused by not dismounting properly on a 3 major OSs before. While they are usually recoverable, I've learned that 2 seconds is not worth the hour or so recovering data.

 

[Katfish]

I always remove safely. I heard if you didn't then a gate to hell is opened, so I got in the habit of doing it a long time ago. Figured I don't need to unleash any more hell into this world than what it already has.

 

[NETWizz]

I just yank provided I am just reading something off a memory stick. If I write something to a memory stick, I safely eject because I have had some bad luck when I wrote something... yanked it and ended up with missing files.

Quite simply, yanking a memory stick makes no difference if you didn't write anything to that stick. If you write something to the stick, it should be okay provided you wait a few seconds until it finishes the write and flushes the USB Disk's buffers. If you yank to early, whatever you put on there will be missing.

When you Safely Remove, you force Windows to sync any files to disk.


The reality is that it is dependent upon the Removal Policy:

 

[Caldwellone]

I'm a recovered yanker.. Can I say that? Anyway.. I have had a few issues after yanking like check disk checking a 1tb drive on reboot.. Never a good idea to interrupt that. Had to wait up to an hour for it to finish at times. Learned my lesson after that.. If you yank too much you might go blind (from watching check disk)

 

[Larry Sabo]

I religiously use "Safely remove" if I just wrote to the drive. If the drive can't be safely removed at the time, I'll use Unlocker to see what's locking it and terminate that program, if feasible. (My "ESP" indexed search and PowerDesk file management programs often lock drives because they are indexing the contents.) I also use Sysinternals' Sync program to flush the cache if in doubt. If it's locked by Explorer, I wait, or even do a restart if it's important data. I've bricked a 16GB flash drive by just unplugging it before flushing the cache, so once burned, twice shy.

 

[Xander]

I am looking forward to Xander's reply on this topic.

Aw, shucks.

Someone here has, in their signature, "Life is to short to remove safely."

I've heard the same rumour.


Went looking for the t-shirt I'm going to buy myself for my next birthday but didn't see it. Settled for this selection:

Lisa? Are you asking for our porn?

I have a favourite flash drive (Lacie Key, very pretty, gets a lot of comments) that seems to be on the decline. On-site, I try to remember to remove it nicely but not always.

 

[ac1]

I used to do it, But now only do it on mac's usually since they show error messages if you don't eject it first. If I have some important files on it, I may safely remove it

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

It depends, but typically, I safely remove them regardless of OS (windows, linux, mac). I have seen way too man issues caused by not doing it. The times that I do not, is when Windows complains that the drive is being used when it is clearly not being used. It doesn't take but a couple seconds to be safe rather than sorry.

This is how I go about it. If Windows says it's in use but the activity light is off I will pull it.

 

[Tab Alternatives]

Flash drives are designed to be hot swappable. Meaning, they are made to be plugged in and then yanked out whenever. Reading or writing it "should" be fine.

But using that mind set, I always found myself having to reload the FS on my flash drive due to corruptions. So I can proudly say I always unmount it now, and never have that issue anymore...hmmm

 

[gazza]

I safely remove all USB media devices. Like any device sudden power loss cannot be good for it.

 

[strollin]

I safely remove every time. Been burned in the past so now always do it.

 

[buzzcut]

I showed a silver client Friday how to safely remove her USB devices. Told her better safe than sorry. Now if only I would do the same. (80% of the time I will)
moral of the story: do what I say not what I do.

 

[NYJimbo]

I have found that sometimes if you pull a USB stick before stopping and then go to reinsert it sometimes it will not be sensed. I think this has happened on XP machines but maybe also on later O/S's. It doesnt hurt the stick but when it does happen sometimes I had to reboot the machine to clear whatever it was the windows O/S was stuck on.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

On the Mac side at least, I've gotten more data recovery/retrieval attempts for unmountable volumes this way.

 

[FoolishTech]

I can't believe this thread is still alive.

Due to Windows write caching taking it's sweet time, there are those occasions where I remove a USB device without "safely removing" and the data won't show up on the drive. Due to this I generally make a judgement call on whether it is safe to remove without "safely removing" first depending on how much data I wrote to it, what else the PC was doing at the time in the way of file operations, and how much time has elapsed since I copied data to it. I don't have an exact formula, just go on my instinct.

If it's really important data however, I generally do the safe method.

BUT...........

There are those times when it has nothing to do with cached data, but Windows won't allow you to "safely" remove a device if there is a stuck open file handle to something on that volume. In that case it seems like it is NEVER safe to remove according to Windows.

In that event if you want to remove anyway you can ensure your data is actually written from cache to the drive itself with Sysinternals Sync.exe which I have used for this purpose in the past, on all of my tech machines I had a batch file on the desktop that ran Sync for that purpose.

 

[Larry Sabo]

In that event if you want to remove anyway you can ensure your data is actually written from cache to the drive itself with Sysinternals Sync.exe which I have used for this purpose in the past, on all of my tech machines I had a batch file on the desktop that ran Sync for that purpose.

+1 for Sync. I use LockHunter to try unlocking processes that won't let me safely remove USB devices, after running Sync. There are a couple of program I use that are guilty of locking files unnecessariloy, ESP (a file indexing/search program something like Everywhere) and PowerDesk (a preferred alternative to Windows Explorer). If it's a drive image just created or data recovery files, I don't take a chance and just shut down the system before removing the USB or even eSATA device. Just logging off is not enough.

 

[Mike K]

Life is too short... to restore lost data.

When dealing with customers data and equipment I always remove USB safely.
With my own stuff I could be a little careless. Sometimes files on the flash drive become corrupted.

 

[Tab Alternatives]

When dealing with customers data and equipment I always remove USB safely.
With my own stuff I could be a little careless. Sometimes files on the flash drive become corrupted.

With your customer's data, you're careful.

But with your data, ahh...just let it go corrupt! "Sometimes files on the flash drive become corrupted." Maybe that's because you don't practice safe removal! Hmm...

Nice.