Are USB 2.0 Flash Drives 'Hot Swapable' in XP ?

[thatsright]

I just bought a PNY USB 2.0 128MB Attaché' Flash Drive tonight from CompUSSR for $25 AR. Now when I was testing it out on my XP Pro w/ SP1a rig, I'm wondering if I can just 'rip-it-out' of the USB port when I'm done copying to the device. Or do I always have to go down to the lower right of th taskbar and click on 'Stop' for the USB Device.

Could I damage my Flash Drive, or XP if I don't click on 'Stop' in Windows? I thought that XP was modern enough that a USB Flash drive would be hot-swappable?

Thanks.

 

[TSDible]

I always just 'Hot Swap' mine. I have never had a problem.

 

[SocrPlyr]

it isn't about damaging the device, it is about losing data
with older versions of windows write caching would automatically be enabled. if you would take it out before that data was written to the drive you would lose that data, or the drive data might become corrupted if taken out during a write operation.
winXP by default has it set to Quick Removal (disabled write caching) but you can change it to performance if you would like in the drive properties, altho it is not suggested

Josh

 

[0roo0roo]

hot swap yup. just wait till it finishes writing b4 u rip it out obviously.

 

[Jeff7]

USB is designed as a hot-swap bus. The write cache issue is the only thing to watch for then, and that's not the USB port's fault.