Hi everyone,

I'm sure everyone has thought and do think about this with their flash drives and 'phones'...

Do you play it safe "safely remove hardware", and "stop" your mass storage device from the laptop/desktop computer? Or do you go wild and rip the usb cable out to your hearts desire?

What are the risks, if any?

P.S. Don't be afraid to admit if you don't eject safely. You won't lose any nerd points, at least in my eyes you won't...

depends with my external 1T harddrive i safely remove with a n900 i safely remove but flash drives can be a bit hit and miss sometimes i do sometimes i dont
not too sure on the risks but i think it can corrupt or delete the data on the device

I'm not a fan of corrupted file-systems.

i play it safe as i dnt want a fooked up system

It happened to me ONE time, a couple of years ago, I just ripped a little 8gb usb stick, and it corrupted all my data in it. I would plug it in many computer, including Windows and Linux, and the drive wouldn't read. Windows would see it in My Computer but couldn't open, I don't remember the error message it prompted, but it suggested that the drive be formatted. So I did, lost all my data (which was only media, so not important) and was able to re-use it afterwards. But yea, that only happen ONCE in my lifetime, lol. But still, with a device as expensive as my N900 as well as my 64gb Kingston USB stick, I both just safely remove them both. After all, it takes only about 3 seconds longer.

i never do it ..... never messed anything up .... fingers crossed!

I am playing it safe for long time. Never had problems with memory corruption but several times couldn't mount devices on USB port where I didn't play it safe. And usually those problems were happening when I *had to use* this specific port for something...

I do it always and I recommend to everyone to do it especially on FAT/FAT32 filesystems wich are easily corruptable.

i never do it. have had some issues with extra ports for media cards in my hp printer where it zapped my card rndering it useless.

i back up data on my cards usually at least one time a week or so.

i have never had that problem with an interated reader on the pc.

i would just be sure that there is no current going through the card when you pull it out. ge sure the window that shows it available or its content is closed and wait 1 or 2 seconds and it should be fine.

my understanding as to why it corrupts the file is that there is still current going through the card and in effect...implodes causing damage.

if someone else could give a better explaination or second the motion then great.

I always safely eject all mass storage medias, why corrupt file system just because is too lazy or busy?