Unsafe removal of external device(s)

[Blithe]

I use external USB and firewire drives. I often forget to click the tray
icon, cancel the drive(s) via software, and manually switch or toggle the
drive power switch to 'off' before shutting down the PC. That's not
recommended but ...

1. What are the odds of damaging external drives by neglecting the
recommended protocol?
2. More importantly, is there any way W2K settings can be configured to
remind the user to follow proper protocol - either before or after starting
the shut down?

Thanks

 

[Bob I]

It's your data that is at risk. The operating system can't guess that
you are going to jerk the plug.

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

I use external USB and firewire drives. I often forget to click the tray
icon, cancel the drive(s) via software, and manually switch or toggle the
drive power switch to 'off' before shutting down the PC. That's not
recommended but ...

1. What are the odds of damaging external drives by neglecting the
recommended protocol?
2. More importantly, is there any way W2K settings can be configured to
remind the user to follow proper protocol - either before or after starting
the shut down?

The file format will have some effect on this. NTFS is much more
tolerant of data interruption than FAT. It has journaling and other
features that let it roll back some changes when it's next accessed and
determined to be 'dirty'.

Generally, if the device has been sitting awhile with no access, nothing
has probably happened. You can try running a CHKDSK on it to see if
there is any corruption, especially if it's FAT formatted.