Is It Safe to Remove a Flashdrive Without “Ejecting” It?

Generally, it is safe to remove your USB Flash drive without ejecting it. In the most modern Windows operating systems from Windows 10 and Windows 11 “safely removing hardware” is not a big deal due to the “Quick removal” feature.

Quick removal allows you to remove a USB device without having to go through the process of safely ejecting it.

When Quick removal is enabled, Windows configures the USB device to prioritize quick removal over performance. This means that write caching is disabled or set to a default that doesn’t require manual ejection. As a result, you can safely remove the USB device at any time without the need to use the “Safely Remove Hardware” feature.

How to enable or disable Quick Removal for a USB device in Windows 10 and 11:

1. Connect the USB device to your computer.
2. Right-click the Start button and select “Disk Management.”
3. In the Disk Management window, locate your USB device in the list of drives.
4. Right-click the USB device and select “Properties.”
5. In the Properties window, go to the “Policies” tab.
6. Under the “Removal policy” section, you’ll find two options:
   • “Quick removal” (default): Allows you to remove the device without ejecting.
   • “Better performance”: Enables write caching to improve performance but requires safe removal.
7. Select the desired option and click “OK” to save the changes.

Yanking a USB device out of a port is not anymore as scary as in the olden time of Windows XP. Just make sure that you are not running any application or editing any unsaved files from your USB device, pulling it out carelessly might still corrupt your files.