ELi5: Why does pulling a USB drive out before you select “eject” matter?
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Imagine you are letter a letter on a piece of paper with a pen, then I yank that paper from you. If I’m lucky, I yanked it when your pen was raised from the paper, and I just end up with an incomplete letter. If I’m unlucky, I yanked it right when your pen was pressed down, and I end up with a big line through the page, ruining the letter. That’s you, yanking the USB drive out of the socket while Windows is trying to write data.
Now imagine I’m dictating to you what to write down. Naturally you can’t write as fast as I can talk, so you remember the last few words that I told you in your short-term memory, and use the gaps between sentences to catch up. But you never explicitly tell me you’re doing this, and you always catch up eventually so there’s no need for me to slow down, so what you’re doing is invisible to me. I’ll just assume that if I’ve finished dictating a sentence, then you’ve finished writing it down. But let’s say I finish a sentence then immediately yank the paper from you. The letter might be incomplete, but I didn’t know because you kept that hidden from me. Instead, I should tell you I want to take the paper, and wait for you to tell me it’s ok before I do. That’s Windows write caching, and safely removing the USB device.
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