I use a USB memory stick to move files between my XP and OSX 4.10 computers pretty often. I've noticed that, when it doesn't eject immediately, it can take up to five minutes for OSX to eject the drive. Sometimes I am in a rush and need to move the drive quickly. What are my chances of causing serious data loss on the drive if I take the drive out without waiting for the icon to disappear?
On XP, they reccommend that you don't remove the drive without shutting it down, but it is really just a precaution. The OS caches everything before writing, so as long you're not actually writing files to the drive when you pull it out, it won't hurt anything.
I pulled my drive out of my Macbook once without waiting for it to eject, and when I put it back in, OSX told me it was empty. I even gave it to a friend sitting near me, who has the same macbook and version of OSX, and he said it was empty. I tried it again and got nothing, so I tried rebooting and was very relieved to see that OSX had not screwed over my memory stick. I'm happy that it didn't really break anything, but now I am kind of wary of OSX's handling of flash drives.
On XP, they reccommend that you don't remove the drive without shutting it down, but it is really just a precaution. The OS caches everything before writing, so as long you're not actually writing files to the drive when you pull it out, it won't hurt anything.
I pulled my drive out of my Macbook once without waiting for it to eject, and when I put it back in, OSX told me it was empty. I even gave it to a friend sitting near me, who has the same macbook and version of OSX, and he said it was empty. I tried it again and got nothing, so I tried rebooting and was very relieved to see that OSX had not screwed over my memory stick. I'm happy that it didn't really break anything, but now I am kind of wary of OSX's handling of flash drives.