Hands-On Tech 279 Transcript
Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Hands-On Tech, let's talk about a long-held belief that honestly needs correcting. It's about ejecting your USB drive. Stay tuned. Hello and welcome to Hands-On Tech. I am Mikah Sargent, and today we are answering your tech questions. Today's tech question comes in from Bernice, and Bernice writes, For 20 years, I've dutifully clicked safely eject before pulling out a flash drive while my son just yanks his out and nothing bad ever happens to him. Is ejecting still necessary, or is this just a ritual from another era, like blowing on Nintendo cartridges? What's actually happening in there when you pull a drive early? Bernice from Topeka, Kansas.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:58]:
Bernice, thank you so much for writing in with your question. I love it. And it's a great one because, well, it is something that I have been very mindful of over the years, something that I have, you know, wondered if it's okay to do or not do. What is the answer? Well, let's talk about it. On Windows, honestly, your son is mostly right and has been since 2018. But on a Mac, you Are the one. That's right. So keep ejecting.
Mikah Sargent [00:01:31]:
Let's talk about first and foremost, what is ejecting actually for? What are you doing when you eject a drive from your device? Well, this has to do with a little system, a little feature called write caching. That's W-R-I-T-E caching, okay? So this is something that you have to understand kind of happens behind the scenes, right? To give you the impression of things moving faster. Back in the day, the computer would tell you that the copy that you were doing was complete, but really what was happening is that while it was telling you that the copy was complete, it was actually holding some of that data in memory and then planned to write it to the drive later. So if you yanked that drive out during that window and then that data, which was not actually sent yet, ended up not making it there, and honestly, this could be sometimes the whole file table, it will upon your yank get corrupted. Ugh. You don't want that. So safely eject was the command that basically told the system, hey, I want you to actually finish sending everything that's in the cache over. I want you to close it up and then I want you to make it safe to pull out the drive.
Mikah Sargent [00:02:51]:
Now that said, in 2018, Things shifted starting with Windows 10 version, I believe it's 1809. That was back in October of 2018. Microsoft flipped the default to something called Quick Removal. What this does is it turns off write caching out of the box for external drives. So when the copy dialog finishes, when it tells you that it's done copying, it wasn't lying to you anymore. The data really was on the drive and you really could pull it out without that ritual. In fact, Microsoft has some official documentation on this policy. So here you can see the default media removal policy is something that you can change between quick removal and better performance.
Mikah Sargent [00:03:40]:
Of course, it also says in earlier versions of Windows, the default policy was better performance. These days, drives move a lot quicker, and so you don't really have as much of a concern that those transfers aren't going to happen. Here it talks about quick removal where the policy manages storage operations in a manner that keeps the device ready to remove at any time, whereas better performance is one that makes it so that it can cache write operations to the external device. In other words, it can do what it used to do. Now though, the problem was that people were still yanking drives out anyway. So Windows said, you know what, we got to do what the people want, skate to where the puck is going, right? So let's go ahead and make sure That in this case, you can pull out the drive and nothing is getting in the way. It's, I think, one of these rare cases where you see, even if it doesn't feel like it's a better policy because it's not, not toward performance or making things seem faster or what have you, it's one that matches actual human behavior. And I think that it was a good move to make.
Mikah Sargent [00:04:53]:
That said, And I want you to pay close attention to this. Quick removal does not protect Bernice. It does not protect you if a transfer is still actively running. So if you see the little drive or the little progress bar moving, please do not pull out your, your, your flash drive. You need to leave that there. Some drives also, of course, have an LED. You can see if it's blinking. And if it's blinking, don't pull it.
Mikah Sargent [00:05:23]:
Okay. If you or your IT department switches to a drive, switches a drive that you have plugged into better performance mode, well, be aware that caching is back on and therefore ejecting it is mandatory again. On Windows, if you want to check, you head to Device Manager, you click on the drive that you are specifically working with, and then you choose the Policies tab. Now, That's for you if you're on Windows. But what about Mac and Linux? Well, things are a little different because the eject step is real. But let's talk about how that works in, in practice. What, what, what is needed? Why does it require that eject step? Boyd Genius Report has a guide from, uh, actually May of 2026 talking about the flash drive, uh, situation and needing to pull out your Or needing to eject rather than not. So while write caching, this is what it says in the report, is disabled on Windows by default, macOS and Linux still have it enabled.
Mikah Sargent [00:06:31]:
So on these operating systems, you should always safely remove external drives. In fact, there's no official documentation for disabling it with Apple nor for Linux. And so you do need to go through with that process. And again, it doesn't hurt to do it on Windows just in case your policy is different. So here is the bottom line. Since 2018, if you're using a Windows device, pulling the drive when no transfer is running is fine. But on your Mac, you gotta keep clicking eject because this is still the policy on the Mac. Regardless of what system you're using, please never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever pull a drive during active transfer.
Mikah Sargent [00:07:21]:
And please always think of eject as sort of a free status check, you know, rather than a superstition. It costs 2 seconds to do so and it doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt. And Bernice, just so you know, blowing on the Nintendo cartridges It never really worked either. Sorry. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Hands-On Tech. If you out there have questions for me, please do get in touch. hot@twit.tv is how you do so, and we would love to have you.
Mikah Sargent [00:07:53]:
Thanks so much, and I'll catch you next time for another episode of Hands-On Tech. Bye-bye.
