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Removing Drives

A

andylaiphoto

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 17, 2007
74
1
Why do Macs require you to "eject" a drive before physically removing them? If you pull out a drive without doing so you get a prompt saying the drive was removed incorrectly.

Why on Windows can you plug and unplug without "ejecting" first?

Can not ejecting it first really cause any damage to the drive being removed?
 
A

andylaiphoto

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 17, 2007
74
1
Why is it an issue with Macs and not Windows? Or at least to the point where Windows OS makes a point of it?
 
Mal

Mal

macrumors 603
Jan 6, 2002
6,252
18
Orlando
andylaiphoto said:
Why is it an issue with Macs and not Windows? Or at least to the point where Windows OS makes a point of it?
Click to expand...

It is an issue with Windows, too, which is why the "Safely remove external drives" function exists in Windows. It simply doesn't pop up a warning, so when you do it a bunch of times and then your drive fails, you don't know why. Windows also doesn't actively access a drive when there's no window open, normally, so there is a slightly smaller chance of failure. With OS X, usually Spotlight will be indexing it, or the file system will be accessed, or for some other reason the drive will be in use at any given time. Pulling a drive out without ejecting properly is potentially harmful with any OS, though.

jW
 
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