I have a used both a built in and external multi-format USB card reader. These are the types that have multiple slots and can read Compact Flash, SD, MCC, etc. Windows complains if I just pull the card out without first diabling the device with that USB manager in the toolbar. But the problem is, I can’t just diable a single slot. I have to disable the whole device. But then it won’t read any additional cards until it’s re-enabled.
For my external reader, I have to unplug the reader and plug it back in for the computer to recognize it. For the built-in reader, I have to reboot the whole computer.
So is there a way to tell windows to shut down just Drive F: or whichever slot has the card in it rather than the whole USB device?
In your task tray in the bottom right corner should be an icon with a little green arrow on it. The hover text is “Safely Remove Hardware”. Left click on it and you should have options to remove each device individually.
In Windows Explorer, right click on the letter of the drive you want to pull out, then select “eject” from the drop down menu. After that you can safely pull it out.
Ever since having USB ports, I just ignore ejecting and unplug 'em when done. Never ever had any adverse effects from doing this. Have numerous USB devices, including a card reader
To see/change if this is an issue, re-insert the drive a moment:
Open “My Computer”, your drive should be listed there.
Right click on any drive, select “Properties” from the pull-down menu.
Click the “Hardware Tab.”
Select the USB drive from the list, click “Properties” in the lower right.
Click the “Policies” tab.
There are two options here. For USB devices, the default is usually set to “Optimize for quick removal”, in which case you can just pull it out whenever it’s not actually writing. If it’s not, you can set it that way. The other option is “Optimize for Performace,” but I’ve never noticed an actual speed difference in my (admittedly limited) testing. All this option really does is disable the write cache, a “chunking” mechanism that combines small writes into large ones. Important in the slow CPU/floppy disk era, not such a big deal now.
At the risk of hijacking this thread, is there any reason to do this (disable the device before pulling it out.)? I once heard a 3rd-hand account about data being lost, but I’ve never had a problem.
Due to the nature of my job I do it dozens if not hundreds of times a day. I don’t have time to unmount them so I just pull the card. Sometimes data does get lost, but this is usually before Windows finished writing to the card (the light is still blinking). Once the light stops blinking (i.e. goes solid for my card reader, YMMV) you should be able to pull relatively safely.
Read my previous post. There’s a setting. Even with the write cache enabled; though, there’s not a lot of risk – these usually flush pretty quick if the machine has any idle time (and most computers do).
Good one, **TimeWinder,**that’s one I didn’t even know about. Just checked all my USB devices, and fortunately the default was checked in all cases. Guess that’s why never had any trouble just disconnecting.
I notice this does not work for my two printers, but always just turn them off too, with no problems.
I ‘broke’ an SD card once by pulling it out without shutting it down. After that, I could read the files off of it but could not write to it in any way. Could not format it either.
I tried the properties on the Hardware Tab. I don’t have a Policies tab, but I do have a Disk Properties tab (system=W2K). I don’t have any sort of optimize option. There is a checkbox for Write Cache, but the field is greyed out.
I am able to eject the drive from the File Explorer. I guess I’ll use that shortcut way from now on.
