Is "Eject" the same as "Safely Remove Hardware"?

[Guest]

I just moved a bunch of files from my hard drive to a USB drive. For
some reason, Windows was not showing the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon
in the system tray (even after I expanded it to show ALL icons), so I
went to Windows Explorer, right-clicked on the USB drive, clicked
"Eject", and then took the drive out. Is ejecting the same as "safely
removing" the drive, or could I have lost some data?

 

[Pegasus [MVP]]

I just moved a bunch of files from my hard drive to a USB drive. For
some reason, Windows was not showing the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon
in the system tray (even after I expanded it to show ALL icons), so I
went to Windows Explorer, right-clicked on the USB drive, clicked
"Eject", and then took the drive out. Is ejecting the same as "safely
removing" the drive, or could I have lost some data?

It's the same thing. If unsure about losing data, run chkdsk on the USB
device.

 

[Jim]

I just moved a bunch of files from my hard drive to a USB drive. For
some reason, Windows was not showing the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon
in the system tray (even after I expanded it to show ALL icons), so I
went to Windows Explorer, right-clicked on the USB drive, clicked
"Eject", and then took the drive out. Is ejecting the same as "safely
removing" the drive, No

or could I have lost some data?

Yes

 

[Guest]

     No


  Yes

I found out that the drive had its policy set to "Optimized for quick
removal". That's why the "safely remove hardware" icon wasn't showing
up. Phew!

 

[Doum]

It's the same thing. If unsure about losing data, run chkdsk on the USB
device.

I have a card reader on my desktop PC which adds 4 drive letters in Windows
Explorer. When I use "Right-Click/Eject" on a letter referring to an SDHC
card, I pull out the card after issuing the command and that's it, I don't
even get a prompt to do so, no problem so far.

If I use the "Safely remove hardware" icon, the card reader is deinstalled,
the 4 drive letters disappear in Explorer and I have to reboot to get them
back.

So that tells me that "Eject" and "Safely remove hardware" are not the
same.

 

[Pegasus [MVP]]

I have a card reader on my desktop PC which adds 4 drive letters in
Windows
Explorer. When I use "Right-Click/Eject" on a letter referring to an SDHC
card, I pull out the card after issuing the command and that's it, I don't
even get a prompt to do so, no problem so far.

If I use the "Safely remove hardware" icon, the card reader is
deinstalled,
the 4 drive letters disappear in Explorer and I have to reboot to get them
back.

So that tells me that "Eject" and "Safely remove hardware" are not the
same.

You're right and I was not aware of the difference. Note that you can
actually free up the four drive letters after ejecting the card reader,
without rebooting, using the console command "mountvol". Unfortunately this
has the side effect of removing the drive letters permanently, forcing you
to restore them manually when next inserting the card reader.