Removal storage device question...

[Magic_Hat]

If I remove a flash drive or other similar removable storage device when the computer is turned off, the data on the device will be fine right?

[factotum]

Yes. The only reason the data on such a device might become corrupted (ignoring electrical faults, of course) is if it was removed while data was being written to it, and if the computer is off, there's no way that can be happening.

[wumpus]

You also want to do a full shutdown of your computer first. If you have multiple drives and are using windows it is quite possible you will have unwritten data on some other drive or otherwise have a less than ideal filesystem.

On windows you need to hold down the shift key for a full shutdown. I don't know of any other OS that has such a silly thing, but I know that Linux wouldn't look at a drive that hadn't been "properly" shut down by holding down the shift key. I'd assume that if you already took out the drive, then windows can fix the drive (hopefully nothing important was pending a write). But you really want to hold down the shift key when doing this. There won't be any physical damage, but all the metadata in the filesystem could be wrong.

Never, ever, believe a Microsoft product will do what a user tells it to do. But in this case, there is a simple "Simon Says: Shutdown" to get it to do what you want.

[factotum]

The only thing that holding Shift down when shutting down Windows does is to disable the fast boot feature, e.g. the thing where it copies chunks of system state to the hard drive on shutdown and loads that in on the next boot rather than booting from scratch. It does not affect the fact that all changes to any attached filesystem will have been fully written before the machine powers off, whether you hold Shift or not.

[Magic_Hat]

You also want to do a full shutdown of your computer first. If you have multiple drives and are using windows it is quite possible you will have unwritten data on some other drive or otherwise have a less than ideal filesystem.

On windows you need to hold down the shift key for a full shutdown. I don't know of any other OS that has such a silly thing, but I know that Linux wouldn't look at a drive that hadn't been "properly" shut down by holding down the shift key. I'd assume that if you already took out the drive, then windows can fix the drive (hopefully nothing important was pending a write). But you really want to hold down the shift key when doing this. There won't be any physical damage, but all the metadata in the filesystem could be wrong.

Never, ever, believe a Microsoft product will do what a user tells it to do. But in this case, there is a simple "Simon Says: Shutdown" to get it to do what you want.

The only thing that holding Shift down when shutting down Windows does is to disable the fast boot feature, e.g. the thing where it copies chunks of system state to the hard drive on shutdown and loads that in on the next boot rather than booting from scratch. It does not affect the fact that all changes to any attached filesystem will have been fully written before the machine powers off, whether you hold Shift or not.

Well know I'm confused. Just go with remove when computer is off? Because I've checked with people on other sites and they say that won't harm the data on the storage devices.

[Anymage]

Either specifically eject the storage device, or turn the computer off. Both mean that the computer won't be doing anything to the drive.

[Manga Shoggoth]

It used to be the case that having the entire system powered down meant that it was safe to remove storage devices. Then in Windows 8 Microsoft introduced Fast Boot, (which then became the default in Windows 10), which as noted does a semi-hibernate rather than a full shutdown. There is a very small risk that the process leaves something open/unflushed.

If you disable Fast Boot (either by using the methods above or disabling it in settings) then there is no problem at all.

It is, however, safest to explicitly eject the device before shutting down.

[halfeye]

Well know I'm confused. Just go with remove when computer is off? Because I've checked with people on other sites and they say that won't harm the data on the storage devices.

If it's totally off, you should be okay. If it's sleeping or hibernating or some other variant of not quite off, then you might be able to damage data by removing a device that it would be writing to if it were awake.

[Magic_Hat]

If it's totally off, you should be okay. If it's sleeping or hibernating or some other variant of not quite off, then you might be able to damage data by removing a device that it would be writing to if it were awake.

So if I hit "Shutdown" from the menu and wait for the light indicating power's on to fade to black, I'm fine removing storage devices?

[Lord Torath]

Should be fine, yes. To be absolutely sure, right-click on the device in Windows Explorer, and click Eject. You'll then get a pop-up message saying it's okay to remove your device.