On Windows, I often simply took out the USB drive without “safely removing” it. The data was there 99% of the time. On Linux, if I’m not mistaken, unmounting the drive before disconnecting is what actually writes data to it.
Not in Windows 10/11. You can still “eject” if it makes you feel better, but it’s basically redundant. They reworked the support for removable media so they are always ready to remove except during active read/write operations.
Read/write operations can happen in the background at any moment as long as the drive is mounted, so that’s not terribly comforting.
Anyway, Linux has a mount option, sync, to do the same thing that Windows does with removable media. Dunno if any desktop environments actually use it, but they could.
Besides being slower, though, it has the downside of causing more write operations (since they can’t be batched together into fewer, larger writes), so flash drives will wear out faster. I imagine Windows’ default behavior has the same problem, although with Windows users accustomed to pulling out their drives without unmounting, I suppose that’s the lesser of two evils.
Unmounting removable drives after writing to then is crucially more important than on Windows
How so?
On Windows, I often simply took out the USB drive without “safely removing” it. The data was there 99% of the time. On Linux, if I’m not mistaken, unmounting the drive before disconnecting is what actually writes data to it.
That can be configured with the
syncoption ofmount.Really? I’ve literally never done this but I suppose I really only use my USB for dd’ing a distro.
Removed by mod
It’s pretty important on Windows too, though. Always “eject” or “safely remove hardware” before unplugging!
Not in Windows 10/11. You can still “eject” if it makes you feel better, but it’s basically redundant. They reworked the support for removable media so they are always ready to remove except during active read/write operations.
Read/write operations can happen in the background at any moment as long as the drive is mounted, so that’s not terribly comforting.
Anyway, Linux has a mount option,
sync, to do the same thing that Windows does with removable media. Dunno if any desktop environments actually use it, but they could.Besides being slower, though, it has the downside of causing more write operations (since they can’t be batched together into fewer, larger writes), so flash drives will wear out faster. I imagine Windows’ default behavior has the same problem, although with Windows users accustomed to pulling out their drives without unmounting, I suppose that’s the lesser of two evils.