This common fear of USB drives has been a myth for years

At the time, removing a USB drive or external hard drive from a Windows computer was considered unwise. This is because operating systems cached the data they transferred to RAM before writing it to an external drive to improve system performance. If you removed the USB drive without ejecting it, the data could be corrupted or even permanently lost because it was still cached in memory. By safely deleting it, the operating system did some housekeeping, such as clearing the cache to clear all pending write operations before detaching the drive.

But this has since become a myth since Windows users no longer need to do this. Since Windows 10 version 1809, released in November 2018, Microsoft has included a feature called “Quick Delete” and made it the default external storage deletion policy. Windows no longer caches disk write operations in memory, which typically makes external drives ready to be removed at any time without needing to follow the secure eject process. However, “speedy deletion” has not completely eliminated the need for secure deletion. In some cases you still need to use it.

Although write caching is disabled by default on Windows, macOS and Linux always have it enabled. On these operating systems, you should always safely remove external drives. There is no official documentation on disabling it on the Apple or Linux support pages, so this is the expected workflow. Even with “Quick Delete” in Windows, there is still a small risk of data corruption or loss if you do not verify that all files have finished transferring to the drive. If in doubt, follow the safe ejection protocol instead.

Sometimes you may need to enable write caching in Windows, which will require you to always remove USB drives safely. This may happen if you notice that file transfers are slowing down your computer. Although having to manually eject disks is annoying, writing cache ensures that the disk writing process does not negatively impact system performance by offloading it to RAM. Without this, the operating system will have to complete the data transfer all at once, which may result in reduced performance. This isn’t really a problem with faster, more reliable storage options like SSDs.

To re-enable cache writing, follow the steps below:

1. Right-click Start and select “Disk Management.”

2. At the bottom of the window, you will see the drive labels. Right-click on the desired external drive and select “Properties”.

3. In the “Deletion Policy” section, select “Better Performance”.

4. Click “OK”.