You Are No Longer Required to ‘Safely Remove’ USB Flash Drives, Says Microsoft

Each one of us using a Windows PC or laptop would know one common step associated with USB flash drives. It is to click on ‘Safely Remove USB‘ option before ejecting the USB flash drive. Because there is a common understanding that this helps in not corrupting the USB flash drives.

Now, Microsoft has finally answered whether you should ‘safely remove’ your USB flash drive or not. Microsoft says that on Windows 10, you no longer need to ‘safely remove’ your USB flash drives. And yes, your drive will be safe even if you just eject it when not in use.

Microsoft says there is no need to safely remove USB flash drive on Windows 10

Now that Microsoft has told you not to ‘safely remove’ USB flash drives every time on ejecting, you will not do so. But the company has also given an explanation for the same. Also, it is worth noting that the feature Microsoft is talking about is available only on Windows 10.

Therefore, you still need to ‘safely remove’ your USB drive on Windows 8 or lower. According to Microsoft, Windows 10 has a feature called ‘quick removal’ which is automatically activated whenever a USB drive is plugged into the PC.

Once all the data transfer is complete, this feature will allow you to just remove the flash drive from PC. After that, you need not worry about the drive being corrupted. But Microsoft says that the USB flash drive should not be reading or writing anything to and from the PC while you eject the device.

In that case, your USB drive could be in danger of being corrupted because of the ongoing operations. ‘Quick Removal’ basically prevents any USB drive from continuously trying to write to the drive so you can eject it anytime if not in use.

Since Windows 10 version 1809, Microsoft has made this the default setting for every USB flash drive connecting to the PC. So if you are on Windows 10 version October 2018 update or higher, you are totally safe to remove your USB drive normally.

This new feature present on Windows 10 came into focus right now because IT Professionals started getting notified by companies regarding this.

Prior to that, no one knew that this feature existed and even Microsoft did not advertise it as being present anywhere. However, you will still find the option to “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media” once you plug your USB drive to your PC.