Is It Really Necessary to Eject the USB Before Pulling It Out?

You’ve been working in front of your office computer for hours and you suddenly realize it’s time to go. So you rush in and save the files you need, close all the software one by one, and quickly yank out your USB flash drive, ignoring the “safely remove hardware” rule yet again for the millionth time.

We’ve all been there. We’re all guilty as charged. But it’s still an interesting question to ask: Is it really okay to remove your flash drive without ejecting it?

If you will review Phillip Remaker’s response to this in Quora, you will know that waiting for a few seconds before pulling your little device out can make a difference – a huge difference, in fact.

According to Remaker, the habit may not instantly damage your files but pulling USB sticks that way puts you at the danger of confusing your computer system. Besides, operating systems are designed in such a way that they treat every external drive – flash drives included – to stay accessible at all times. So although it may seem harmless in the outset, it can cause problems such as “lost data, corrupted file systems, crashing programs, or hanging computers requiring a reboot.”

Believe it or not, abruptly pulling out your USB stick can be very risky.

Popular Mechanics’ Rachel Z. Arndt adds:

“For efficiency’s sake, (computers) don’t actually write the files you’re moving to the disk until there are multiple files to move. Ejecting the disk is a way of telling the computer that it’s time to do the writing, regardless of whether the computer deems it efficient. When you remove a flash drive without warning the computer first, it might not have finished writing to the drive.”

Remaker sums up his point by saying “You can remove a disk at any time, but you are at the mercy of how well programs using the disk cope with the sudden disappearance of that disk.”

If you’ve experienced how much of a headache it is to lose precious data, you will consistently take a few seconds to eject your stick – even if you are too busy.