Hi all,
I was wondering if I would be doing harm to my drive by ejecting and unplugging while there is still power to the drive.
Is it basically the same as not ejecting?
In XP my drive would power off in Windows 7 it does not.
I use this setting to prevent any problems.
Dev Mgr> Disc Drives> right click on drive> policies.
Hope this helps.:)
the "safely remove media" thing just makes sure that there are no file transfers going on but does not power off the device. What PSCO said above is also a good thing to do.
The drive can be safely removed afterwards. Hard drives don't have "power down" switches or commands. They power down (that is, park the drive heads) when they sense that no more power is coming in.
do you think any harm would be done if I didn't do the recommend step?
Why would microsoft not enable that by default?
If you don't do the step, you will have to power down the comp before removing drive.
If not, you will ruin the drive.
As bobafetthotmail explains:
You can also use the "safely remove hardware and eject media" (icon next to clock at bottom.)The drive can be safely removed afterwards. Hard drives don't have "power down" switches or commands. They power down (that is, park the drive heads) when they sense that no more power is coming in.
I don't use this option because I would continually get an error saying "busy."
Last edited by PSCO2007; 13 Aug 2013 at 23:15.
The wording "ruin the drive" is a bit excessive. You will get corrupt files or fail a file transfer. The drive itself isn't damaged.
Afaik, that option is usually enabled for external hard drives. Depends on how the device presents itself, so it's always better to check.
While for truly "removable drives" like usb flash drives and card readers, this is always like that by default as they are a different category for Windows.
Maybe I worded it incorrectly - before I used this option and ejected, I lost all files on the drive.The wording "ruin the drive" is a bit excessive
I also use this for flash drives, since that is also listed in "safely remove hardware." as well as policies in Dev Mgr.
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