Should I really “eject” USB/flash/thumb drives?

[FoxYolk]

When you pull a drive or something, windows will say you should eject it. Is it really necessary? 

[Eigenvektor]

Windows may cache writes to a drive for performance reasons. So if you pull it without ejecting first, it might be in the middle of a write, which could lead to corrupt data.

[Avaviel]

I still recall being at a hotel lobby, downloading anime onto my USB drive, not ejecting it, and going upstairs only to find the file corrupted and unwatchable.

You can enable a setting that disables the caching. Here are some instructions I found that tell how to do that. But remember it is per drive, so each USB drive would need the setting.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

3 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Windows may cache writes to a drive for performance reasons. So if you pull it without ejecting first, it might be in the middle of a write, which could lead to corrupt data.

this is only if you have that on iirc

flash drives by default dont have write caching akaik, which is why you can pull and go. 

[FoxYolk]

1 minute ago, Avaviel said:

I still recall being at a hotel lobby, downloading anime onto my USB drive, not ejecting it, and going upstairs only to find the file corrupted and unwatchable.

You can enable a setting that disables the caching. Here are some instructions I found that tell how to do that. But remember it is per drive, so each USB drive would need the setting.

oh, okay

[Eigenvektor]

4 minutes ago, Helpful Tech Witch said:

this is only if you have that on iirc

flash drives by default dont have write caching akaik, which is why you can pull and go. 

Right.

 

The eject feature essentially goes back to mechanical drives. Ejecting the drive allows it to move its head into the parked position. It should also be able to do this in the case of sudden power loss, but why risk it?

 

On top of that, a mechanical drive often has its own write cache. Ejecting the drive allows the drive can commit anything to disk, before being unplugged. Sudden loss of power could lead to data loss.

 

On a modern system it should generally be safe to unplug a drive, especially when the drive is idle.

[Kilrah]

By default Windows will set removable drives to not cache writes, so once the copy window disappears all writes should be committed. You can change that to improve performance but then you need to use eject.

 

BUT some drives have internal cache, and may be lying to Windows that "the transfer is done" while they still need to clear their own cache. Used to have one that was terrible about that, but at least had an LED to signal its status. Even after finishing the copy and/or ejecting successfully the LED might have been blinking for another 10-20s and you'd get corruption if removed before.

Should be pretty rare nowadays, this was an early USB3 flash drive.

[dizmo]

1 hour ago, Eigenvektor said:

Right.

 

The eject feature essentially goes back to mechanical drives. Ejecting the drive allows it to move its head into the parked position. It should also be able to do this in the case of sudden power loss, but why risk it?

 

On top of that, a mechanical drive often has its own write cache. Ejecting the drive allows the drive can commit anything to disk, before being unplugged. Sudden loss of power could lead to data loss.

 

On a modern system it should generally be safe to unplug a drive, especially when the drive is idle.

That's odd, considering none of my mechanical external hard drives have even had the option to eject before unplugging them.

[RayLeech]

Just now, dizmo said:

That's odd, considering none of my mechanical external hard drives have even had the option to eject before unplugging them.

Because they are not marked 'removable'. If they are hot-swapable, you'd have the same 'Eject' choice.

[FoxYolk]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

By default Windows will set removable drives to not cache writes, so once the copy window disappears all writes should be committed. You can change that to improve performance but then you need to use eject.

 

BUT some drives have internal cache, and may be lying to Windows that "the transfer is done" while they still need to clear their own cache. Used to have one that was terrible about that, but at least had an LED to signal its status. Even after finishing the copy and/or ejecting successfully the LED might have been blinking for another 10-20s and you'd get corruption if removed before.

Should be pretty rare nowadays, this was an early USB3 flash drive.

 

2 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

Right.

 

The eject feature essentially goes back to mechanical drives. Ejecting the drive allows it to move its head into the parked position. It should also be able to do this in the case of sudden power loss, but why risk it?

 

On top of that, a mechanical drive often has its own write cache. Ejecting the drive allows the drive can commit anything to disk, before being unplugged. Sudden loss of power could lead to data loss.

 

On a modern system it should generally be safe to unplug a drive, especially when the drive is idle.

2 hours ago, Helpful Tech Witch said:

this is only if you have that on iirc

flash drives by default dont have write caching akaik, which is why you can pull and go. 

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

That's odd, considering none of my mechanical external hard drives have even had the option to eject before unplugging them.

I think I started a heated argument...

[Eigenvektor]

2 hours ago, dizmo said:

That's odd, considering none of my mechanical external hard drives have even had the option to eject before unplugging them.

I no longer have one, but mine had the option, same a my current external SSD

[kokosnh]

I would recommend using the Windows cache, and using eject before removing the drive ( as otherwise the data may be corrupted, or not finished writing )

simply because it’s faster to do that.
Not using Windows write cache is just slow.

 

as for the media, I would recommend, using GPT and NTFS, or ReFS ( do note the compatibility issue with older OS ). 
as MBR ones can get corrupted easily in my expirients.   

 

 

[FoxYolk]

On 10/4/2023 at 10:37 PM, kokosnh said:

I would recommend using the Windows cache, and using eject before removing the drive ( as otherwise the data may be corrupted, or not finished writing )

simply because it’s faster to do that.
Not using Windows write cache is just slow.

 

as for the media, I would recommend, using GPT and NTFS, or ReFS ( do note the compatibility issue with older OS ). 
as MBR ones can get corrupted easily in my expirients.   

 

 

Oh, okay