Is it safe to unplug USB devices?

[Sniper82]

Is it safe to unplug USB devices and such before stopping it using the safely remove hardware app in XP? Sometimes I stop it sometimes I just unplug it.

 

[Ricemarine]

Usually when it really matters is when you have stored data on it...

Flash drives you might want to.
Any media you might want to.
Ipods, you would want to.

But if like a joystick, no.

 

[Zepper]

Yeah, storage devices should be shut down properly. Other peripherals like keyboards and such shouldn't matter much.

.bh.

 

[NuAlphaMan]

You should properly shut down your USB memory devices. If not, you could damage them.

 

[Sniper82]

ok thx all. That probably explains why my Muvo 64mb quit working right after I unplugged it.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Originally posted by: Ricemarine
Usually when it really matters is when you have stored data on it...

Flash drives you might want to.
Any media you might want to.
Ipods, you would want to.

But if like a joystick, no.

truth

 

[HyunYu]

If you don't have write caching enabled on removable drives, then XP says it's OK to remove them (unplug, turn the power off, etc.) without using the "Safely remove hardware..." icon in the system tray first. See:

Device Manager-->Disk Drives-->right click on the drive, choose Properties-->Policies tab

I only found this feature a few weeks ago, and to be honest, the ingrained habit of using "Safely remove..." is too strong for me to feel completely sanguine about just yanking the cable or shutting the power down on a USB2 enclosure drive.

 

[Baked]

I just yank the flahs drives and readers out.

 

[azev]

Originally posted by: HyunYu
If you don't have write caching enabled on removable drives, then XP says it's OK to remove them (unplug, turn the power off, etc.) without using the "Safely remove hardware..." icon in the system tray first. See:

Device Manager-->Disk Drives-->right click on the drive, choose Properties-->Policies tab

I only found this feature a few weeks ago, and to be honest, the ingrained habit of using "Safely remove..." is too strong for me to feel completely sanguine about just yanking the cable or shutting the power down on a USB2 enclosure drive.

I've bever used safely remove since I've upgraded to xp and none of my flash thumbdrives and variety of flash card I've owed ruined because of that.

 

[RaiderJ]

Never hurt any of my stuff to just yank it out.

 

[SparkyJJO]

With the drive optimized for quick removal (like most flash drives are for instance) I just pull them without clicking the icon. I just make sure the activity light hasn't been doing anything for a couple seconds after reading/writing and I've never had a problem with it. I have a nomad muvo 64MB that I've used like that for years and no trouble ever.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
With the drive optimized for quick removal (like most flash drives are for instance) I just pull them without clicking the icon. I just make sure the activity light hasn't been doing anything for a couple seconds after reading/writing and I've never had a problem with it. I have a nomad muvo 64MB that I've used like that for years and no trouble ever.

That's all it takes. Common sense rules. As long as write caching is not enabled for the device, yank it! Optimized for quick removal disables write caching for that device.