When you think of ejecting, do you picture something abrupt, like that guy in the movies who is suddenly lobbed into the air with his seat when the bad guy hits a button? When it comes to your computer, think again. Safely ejecting removable devices – such as flash drives, external storage and memory cards – is imperative, and here is the reason why…
Ever try to open an external drive only to find that the photos or files on it are corrupt? That maddening data loss can be caused by…you guessed it… someone yanking them out in an unsafe manner. Did you know that when you save a file to one of these devices, it may not be immediately written on to the physical device? Yep, sometimes instead it waits until the operating system is ready to write it. In this instance, if you were to simply yank it out while any files are open or waiting in the write buffer, they could very well become unstable or corrupt.
To safely eject removable devices from your PC, close all open files and right click on the computer chip and green arrow icon in your system tray. Select “Safely Remove Hardware” and a window will open for each device. Select the one you want and press stop. Once it disappears, you’re clear for ejection!
For Mac, there is an icon for each device on your desktop. Simply right click on the one you want and select eject. You can safely remove your device once the icon you selected disappears.