You no longer have to ‘Safely Remove’ your flash drives on Windows 10

Have a habit of just yanking out your flash drive when it’s plugged into your computer? Microsoft has changed its default removal policy for external storage devices on Windows 10 version 1809.

From this version, all external devices automatically adopt the Quick Removal policy when plugged into a Windows 10 computer allowing users to unplug their external devices, such as USB flash drives, without having to initiate the Safely Remove Hardware feature.

Previously, the default removal policy was set to “Better Performance”.

“When this policy is in effect, Windows can cache write operations to the external device,” Microsoft explained in a post.

With Better performance, users have to use Safely Remove Hardware to ensure the caching ends before removing the device, or risk corrupting data.

Quick removal does not allow for Windows to cache write any information, and therefore one can remove the device without waiting for the process to be completed. Microsoft acknowledged that Quick Removal was a safer but slower option.

If you prefer Better Performance however, you can change the default setting in your external device’s Disk Management, under Properties.

When you remove the device, the settings will remain for future use on that particular computer.

“If you use the Better performance policy, you must use the Safely Remove Hardware process to remove the device,” the company concluded.

Feature image: Memeburn