It is always very tempting, you have used a USB powered device, such as an external hard drive or pen drive successfully to store important data and then you just pull it straight out without a second thought. Sometime in the future, you find the device no longer works, asks you to re-format it and all of your important data is either corrupt or lost. What went wrong? You failed to properly unplug the device. People don`t realise that whilst the device is still plugged in, it is communicating constantly with your computer, which means they are both reading and writing and transferring bits of information between themselves.
Suddenly unplugging your device can cause corruption, Windows, your computer hard drive, or all three and subsequent data loss.
So what should I do?
What you should do is look down to the bottom right corner of your screen near the clock. Locate the small green arrow facing to the bottom left and click it. A message will appear, usually giving permission to remove the device. If you have more than one USB device plugged in, you will need to identify which one you want to "safely remove." To do this, click the "My Computer" icon and view your drives, noting the drive letter of the device you wish to remove.
If permission is not given, it will be necessary to wait until such time as it is given, which can sometimes be a while. If you remove it without permission, you can corrupt the data on the device or the computer, or both.
