Correct way to unplug USB thumb drive?

[user12343]

under windoze xp, it's safe to unplug any CF/MS/MMC/SD/XD/thumbdrive cards w/o needing to stop/eject the drive if write-caching is disabled. windoze term it as Optimize for quick removal.

however, if write-caching is enabled (for optimized performance) for these removable drives, it is important to stop the drive before taking out the drive.

you can check if write-caching is enable under device manager, disk drives and its associated Policies tabsheet.

 

[AReality]

Hahaha...

+1 to learnt the hard way also..
My MP3 suddenly died.. lucky format + firmware upgrade helped...

But I have to add tt it's actually quite safe to just plug it out, when u know tt nothing's reading/writing to the device. But... sh!t happens...

.

 

[yzr500abe]

From what i read on the instruction sheet of my thumb drive:
Unplug only if the light is not blinking fast (ie reading/ writing)

So far so good, this method works for me.
If your thumb drive has no blinker for u to see, it's better to use the safe remove hardware method