Safely Ejecting USBs and Hard drives

[Xenesis]

Hey Guys,

 

Now we're all guilty of not "safely ejecting" usbs and hard drives, since life is too short for that or we like to live on the edge. It always seems windows platforms are always cool whenever we decide to whip out our hard drives without any protection but with mac platforms decide to betray us be like "Nah gg, get rekt" and destroy our porn-containing devices. Why du mac do dis?

 

 

[Cryosec]

There's this thing called write caching used by both MacOS and Linux. Basically, the OS creates a "list" of stuff to write on the drive and completes these write tasks later on (sometimes when you click eject).

Windows disabled this thing and writes whatever it has to write directly to the drive, skipping the cache for those drives recognized as removable, while using the write cache for those non removable.

 

In the end, what happens is that on MacOS and Linux you fuck up the data that needs to be (or is being) written on the drive when you "unsafely" unplug the drive.

[Technomancer__]

17 minutes ago, Cryosec said:

There's this thing called write caching used by both MacOS and Linux. Basically, the OS creates a "list" of stuff to write on the drive and completes these write tasks later on (sometimes when you click eject).

Windows disabled this thing and writes whatever it has to write directly to the drive, skipping the cache for those drives recognized as removable, while using the write cache for those non removable.

 

In the end, what happens is that on MacOS and Linux you fuck up the data that needs to be (or is being) written on the drive when you "unsafely" unplug the drive.

you can enable it on the external usb or hard drive on windows too

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I always disable write caching whenever possible.  I don't want the progress dialog to complete & disappear until it's actually DONE, and safe to eject the drive.

 

The progress dialog disappearing is how I know I can safely unplug the drive.

 

Now if only I could hot-plug internal SATA drives... I have more drives than I have drive bays (Rosewill Thor V2), SATA ports (ASRock Z97 Extreme6), & power connectors (Corsair AX760).

[Xenesis]

21 hours ago, Cryosec said:

There's this thing called write caching used by both MacOS and Linux. Basically, the OS creates a "list" of stuff to write on the drive and completes these write tasks later on (sometimes when you click eject).

Windows disabled this thing and writes whatever it has to write directly to the drive, skipping the cache for those drives recognized as removable, while using the write cache for those non removable.

 

In the end, what happens is that on MacOS and Linux you fuck up the data that needs to be (or is being) written on the drive when you "unsafely" unplug the drive.

Thanks man

[Cryosec]

13 hours ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Now if only I could hot-plug internal SATA drives

check your BIOS, I can set some SATA ports as hot-pluggable

 

and holy shit that's a lot of drives

[PianoPlayer88Key]

1 hour ago, Cryosec said:

check your BIOS, I can set some SATA ports as hot-pluggable

 

and holy shit that's a lot of drives

Yeah, I'm aware that may be possible.  (My mobo is the ASRock Z97 Extreme6.)

 

What I'm concerned about though is hot-plugging the SATA power cable not at the same time as the data cable.  (They're two separate cables/connectors.)

[Cryosec]

2 hours ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

What I'm concerned about though is hot-plugging the SATA power cable not at the same time as the data cable

Pluggin in data before power just causes the OS to see the drive as "not ready" but existent, power before data just turns on the drive without data connection. no problem with that. Unplugging, with hot-swap enabled, should work the same way, whether you unplug first data or power, the OS will just see the drive as not ready or non existent anymore.

 

Easy solution is a 5.25" bay to 3.5", for easy hot-plugging