Windows 7 - Do you safely remove hardware

I was just wondering how many people actually use the safely remove hardware USB option.

I only safely remove it when the hardware I use is not mine. I just unplug the hardware if it's mine, whatever it is. I never had something that broke because I didn't safely remove it.

I personally always do a safe removal. Doing a safe removal checks to make sure all open files are closed and any cached writes have been written to the device.

It only takes once that you lose alot of important files that you can't get back so +1 on safely remove

Always

Never.

On windows, NTFS aggressively writes to removable media (anything that will bring up the safely remove option). As long as you don't INSTANTLY pull the drive, I've never lost anything by not doing it, though because of (below) I now just do it out of habit.

Linux though (and possibly mac but not tested) has the /laziest/ cache writing mechanism imaginable for every file system I've used. You HAVE to use it or you WILL lose your data.

I always safely remove hardware

I was copying some files to an external hard drive. I unplugged before it was finished because I was in too much of a hurry to use the safely removed hardware option. Lesson learned.

We need an "when necessary" option.

I always use it for external hard drives.
I never use it for thumb drives, cameras, or printers.