Necessary to eject ext HD when shutting down?

[Wie Gehts]

Dumb Q, guys.....

Most of the time I just shutdown because its easy to forget its there, but is it necessary to eject an external hd before shutting down?

thanks

 

[yg17]

No, not when shutting down. Only if you're unplugging or turning off the drive without shutting down do you need to unmount it

 

[Wie Gehts]

I see. Thanks

I guess that begs the question then. Is there any harm if you forget to eject your device before you unplug? Its so easy to overlook that.

 

[mkrishnan]

I guess that begs the question then. Is there any harm if you forget to eject your device before you unplug? Its so easy to overlook that.

There are a few... there could be a power surge or something that could damage the device physically. More realistically, if a write is in progress (not necessarily because you are actively doing it... it could be because of Spotlight or some daemon or something), then you may corrupt the file structure and/or lose data.