Am I supposed to 'Eject' an external USB drive?

Drive plugged in and showing up as an orange icon. I can click it to access contents, etc all fine. Now when I drag the icon, the trash bin turns into the eject icon.

Leading me to wonder. If I want to unplug that drive, do I just unplug it (Like in windows) or do I have to 'eject' it first?

(Just to clarify - In my senario, I am not writing to the drive, or accessing it. I have finished with it, and I have closed its contents window, so its not 'in use')

Just wanna do things right !

Always eject a USB thumb drive or an external hard drive before unplugging it. You really should do that in Windows also. Most of the time you can get away with not doing any damage to files or folders on the drive if it's unplugged without ejecting it first. But there may be a time when it's being accessed by a write cache and that can cause corruption. Play it safe. ;D

Regards.

Thanks. Kinda thought as much

Surprised Windows is not giving the alert about unplugging hardware without ejecting. Also if you have moved files to Trash, empty the trash before starting the eject process otherwise they will remain.

harryb2448 said:

Surprised Windows is not giving the alert about unplugging hardware without ejecting. Also if you have moved files to Trash, empty the trash before starting the eject process otherwise they will remain.

Click to expand...

Yup this is true. Great tip!

Always Eject! ;D

Always unmount cleanly, regardless of operating system. It's a myth that Windows handles this any better than UNIX (including Mac); as I've stated in a recent thread, a Windows-using co-worker of mine buggered up the firmware on one of my MP3 players, requiring an RMA, by unplugging it from his Windows box without hitting 'Safely Remove Hardware'

Like I mentioned in the previous thread on the same subject, Windows gives you the option of turning off write-caching on external drives. This makes it possible to safely remove an external drive without first ejecting.

Even with write caching turned off, it's best to eject the drive. Write caching is a convenience in that it speeds up the process but even if that's turned off, the system could still be writing to the drive.

Regards.

It never hurts to eject the drive first. But with write-caching disabled it is not necessary and there is no risk. Microsoft set this to be the default behaviour for external drives waaaay back prior to XP SP3.