Ejecting Thumb Drives

F

Freerunner

Member
OK, I know this is a very basic question, but it has been bothering me for a long time. Do I NEED to use the "Eject" function on my PC windows removing a thumb drive? I'm running Win 10 but I know it is there on older versions of windows. What happens if I just pull the drive without using it? I guess, should I be concerned? Thanks
 
Most people don't have issues. I've seen some file system corruption when just yanking them, especially if it's really near a transfer that may still be occurring in the background.

Usually if you see 'this drive must be formatted', someone likely yanked it instead of ejecting it (and you can chkdsk /r to fix). The eject feature just finalizes all of the writes that may still be open on the drive.
 
So I'm not doing any harm to the computer (not the thumb drive) if I pull it early. Not saying I would, just making sure I understand. The only possible damage would be to the file that is being written on the drive. Right?
 
Yanking out a flashdrive does nothing to the computer. It only affects the flashdrive when it's being written or read from.
 
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