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USB Backup Drive


Johnbee58

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I use an external USB hard drive to back up projects and files.  Until yesterday, it gave the option to eject it in the "Show Hidden Icons"  area in the lower right of the screen.  Now it comes up but doesn't give an option to eject anymore and I'm afraid if I don't do this step I may screw up data on both the PC and the USB drive.  The drive is a Seagate and the OS is Windows 8.1.  Any ideas?

Thanks?John B

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Microsoft confirms you really, really don’t need to ‘safely remove’ USB flash drives anymore:

Well, Microsoft is confirming once and for all that — in Windows 10 — it’s no longer a thing you need to worry about. Windows 10 has a feature called “quick removal” that lets you yank a drive anytime (so long as you’re not actively writing files to it), and it’s now the default setting for each new drive you plug in as of Windows 10 version 1809, according to Microsoft’s own support guidance. Basically, “quick removal” keeps Windows from continuously trying to write to a flash drive, which could help in the event you disconnect it.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4495263/windows-10-1809-change-in-default-removal-policy-for-external-media

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I use win 7, win 8.1 and never had any failure.

(Ok, one of thousand in all the year since usb2 became available.)

That one time i remember the pc was sluggish and i should have counted to 5 before pulling it. If i'd done that the pc would had more time to finish writing.

Since a couple of year back with storage size bigger and prices the same or lower i have duplicates on a sata disk which i then put in a box on a shelf.

Earlier you had to have several disks to put all your files on. Photos, videos, audio, documents and software with licenses. Now it all fits on that single disk. Nice.

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Thanks all.

SLIP-Thanks for the link.  Mine is Windows 8.1.  I wonder if the same applies.  I did just yank it a few times and so far nothing bad happened.  The drive came with a utility called "Toolkit" but there's no answers there.  Maybe I'll just start putting off disconnecting it until I shut the PC down.  Probably the safest answer.

?JB

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2 hours ago, S.L.I.P. said:

Microsoft confirms you really, really don’t need to ‘safely remove’ USB flash drives anymore:

Well, Microsoft is confirming once and for all that — in Windows 10 — it’s no longer a thing you need to worry about. Windows 10 has a feature called “quick removal” that lets you yank a drive anytime (so long as you’re not actively writing files to it), and it’s now the default setting for each new drive you plug in as of Windows 10 version 1809, according to Microsoft’s own support guidance. Basically, “quick removal” keeps Windows from continuously trying to write to a flash drive, which could help in the event you disconnect it.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4495263/windows-10-1809-change-in-default-removal-policy-for-external-media

Typical that MS would still make the 'safely remove hardware and eject media' feature an option in the 1809 version when it's no longer necessary. Hopefully their OS isn't going to turn back into bloatware like past versions.

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