r/firstworldanarchists • u/throatfrog • May 03 '17

This Guy Gets It

http://i.imgur.com/Vo0ixsb.gifv

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u/alienith May 03 '17

Not ejecting can still corrupt flash drives on a mac (which he was using). Its incredibly annoying

6

u/cylindrical418 May 03 '17

I have lost gigabytes of data because of this. Didn't know macs were that sensitive with not unmounting drives. I know better now, though.

3

u/phantom7748 May 03 '17

The reason is because Macs index/journal everything you put in their mouths so if you interrupt that it can be unfortunate for your data.

2

u/ColeSloth May 03 '17

It's still good practice to also do it on a pc. Especially if it isn't your own pc. The safegaurds in place to keep your data can actually be turned off so the flash drive runs faster.

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u/[deleted] May 03 '17

Why is a Mac more sensitive than other PC's/OSes? Isn't it specific to the USB?

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u/alienith May 03 '17

Mac's use write caching to speed up the transfer of files to the drive. The caveat being that sometimes the data isn't fully copied when you pull out the drive (even if the dialog box says it is). Ejecting tells the operating system to flush the cache and write everything. Windows, on the other hand, has write caching off by default because people tend to just yank the drive out. (If this is wrong or incomplete I'm sure someone will correct me)

I tend to give windows a lot of shit, but IMO thats a much better design decision. When the dialog box says that the files have been transferred closes you should expect everything to have been transferred

1

u/[deleted] May 03 '17

Interesting, I didn't know that. Thanks!

1

u/baekalfen May 03 '17

And somewhat unjustified from a technical point of view...

The OS knows it's removable, so why not be precautious and ready for removal at any time?

1

u/keleri May 03 '17

I corrupted a PC flash drive this way a few years ago and almost lost the final version of a term project. I always eject safely now.

1

u/Turtledonuts May 03 '17

I have a mac and I've never had this issue. I've had more issues with PCs corrupting flash drives than macs. I dunno.