We have all heard the admonition about safely removing USB devices when we are done with them, but what if an operating system is suspended and you decide to simply unplug the USB device then and there anyway? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answer to a curious reader’s question.
Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.
The Question
SuperUser reader IQAndreas wants to know if it is safe to remove USB media when a computer is suspended:
Is it safe to remove USB media when a computer is suspended?
Since no arms are moving (for USB hard drives), or bytes on the drive flickering on and off (for flash drives), is it then “safe” to unplug the drive in question?
Is this true even if data was being written to it, but the operation was temporarily suspended? (Assuming you do not mind that specific file having been only half-written to the USB drive.)
The Answer
SuperUser contributor kinokijuf has the answer for us:
Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.
Ever wondered why an operating system slowed down to a crawl when using floppies? It is because the cache was flushed after writing each sector so that the floppy could be removed at any time when not in use.
You will still get a dialog pop-up and your program will hang if you try to access a floppy that was removed behind your back. Just insert the floppy back and be done. This will not work with USB drives because they get a different identifier each time. The program will just crash and the operating system may too if a driver was accessing a file.
Image Credit: Ambuj Saxena (Flickr)
