safely remove hardware - is it realy needed?

[Red Squirrel]

With USB sticks, is it really necessairy to do the safety remove thing? I started getting this rundll32 crash every single time I do it and its annoying and I have no time to reformat, but if I just pull it out I can bypass that hassle, just wondering if thats really a bad thing, or if its no big deal.

 

[ForumMaster]

just make sure nothing is being transferred or you'll lose the data. i do this all the time with my ipod mini despite the "Do Not Disconnect" message. i just make sure that nothing is being transfered. (a little icon appears on the ipod if data is being transfered) and nothing has ever happened.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Hmm k figured. So basically treat like a floppy really.

 

[her209]

Is it needed? Yes. The purpose is to flush unwritten data from memory to disk.

 

[Red Squirrel]

How long does that normally take? I usually give at least 5 seconds after having transfered a file, before unplugging it without "safely" removing it.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

NO its not needed as long as u have the USB drive Properties set to "Optimize for Quick Removal" and NOT Optimize for performance

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
NO its not needed as long as u have the USB drive Properties set to "Optimize for Quick Removal" and NOT Optimize for performance

Exactly right! :thumbsup:

 

[Red Squirrel]

Just noticed that option but it seems to be on a "per device" basis. Is there a way to make it global? I'll do exactly that. With today's fast PCs that performance increase is probably not really noticable.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
NO its not needed as long as u have the USB drive Properties set to "Optimize for Quick Removal" and NOT Optimize for performance

Both are grayed out and "Optimize for performance" is the one selected

 

[Nothinman]

Actually it's extremely noticeable, the hard disk is usually the slowest device in the system so telling the system that it can't use memory to cache and reorder writes will kill I/O performance.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Why would it use the HDD though, instead of just writing directly to the device?

 

[Nothinman]

I meant the device, USB sticks are treated like hard disks so there's no point in differentiating between the two.

 

[SolMiester]

I thought using the SRH icon was also to stop 5v power to the device so it doesnt get spiked when removed leaving the device unusable.......

 

[Nothinman]

USB was designed with hotplug in mind and AFAIK power spikes during removable have never been a real issue.

 

[SolMiester]

Not sure about that, I have seen a number of flash drives made useless due to users simply pulling out without using the SRH icon and the device hasnt been read or written to at the time.

So now Im unsure, guess its best just to use the icon.

 

[Nothinman]

It's definitely possible that some cheapo drives have issues, but I can't say I've ever personally seen that happen.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

never seen anything happening on my 10+ usb flash drives.

over the past few years i've saved myself 1000+ mouse clicks and a few hours from never clicking on safely remove hardware on my usb flash drives.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The thing with flash drives is when they do decide to go, it happens fast. Usually its a problem with the PC. A coworker of mine has a PC that we call the USB stick killer. If you put one in the front USB, it kills the drive. Could be anything such as a short, wrong voltage, not enough voltage (so amps spike, causes heat, and burns flash chip)

So always backup.

 

[Nothinman]

The thing with flash drives is when they do decide to go, it happens fast. Usually its a problem with the PC. A coworker of mine has a PC that we call the USB stick killer. If you put one in the front USB, it kills the drive. Could be anything such as a short, wrong voltage, not enough voltage (so amps spike, causes heat, and burns flash chip)

And none of that has to do with flash drives. I would bet that machine would also kill most other USB devices as well.

 

[Skeeedunt]

One time I accidentally plugged a usb lead into a firewire header. That was an awesome way to kill usb devices.

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Both are grayed out and "Optimize for performance" is the one selected

I was looking into this regarding SATA drives, and the options being grayed out had to do with whether the controller was set to AHCI or not. I'm not sure how/if that would translate to USB though.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

The thing with flash drives is when they do decide to go, it happens fast. Usually its a problem with the PC. A coworker of mine has a PC that we call the USB stick killer. If you put one in the front USB, it kills the drive. Could be anything such as a short, wrong voltage, not enough voltage (so amps spike, causes heat, and burns flash chip)

And none of that has to do with flash drives. I would bet that machine would also kill most other USB devices as well.

No he plugged in other stuff such as an external hdd. Depends on the device. Some devices may be more sensible then others.

 

[Nothinman]

No he plugged in other stuff such as an external hdd. Depends on the device. Some devices may be more sensible then others.

But there's obviously something wrong with his machine that isn't specific to flash drives.

 

[Red Squirrel]

thats an obvious given fact. It was just not big enough of an issue to do something about it. As long as he remembered to use the other port lol.