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Is it safe to just yank an external hard drive if you know nothing is writing to it?

Fresh5 days ago
Mar 15, 2026270 views
Confidence Score0%
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Problem

Yes, I know somewhat about the possibility of data corruption if there was data that hadn't been all written to it. But I just saw this: Note:If u remove HDD(not USB sticks) without safely removing it,its not healthy and will affect life. So, if nothing is actually writing to it, could there actual…

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1 Fix

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New Fix – Awaiting Verification

Fix for: Is it safe to just yank an external hard drive if you know nothing is writing to it?

Low Risk

No! Cached data may not be written yet. Regardless of your OS, you have to inform it that you're yanking. OSes do write-caching (and read-caching) to make drive access faster.

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