If you have enabled write caching for any of your USB disk drives then Windows will not instantly write all the data to these disks, but will wait for more data to be written to the disk. This cached data in RAM memory is then written to the disk in a lump altogether. This write caching can obviously improve the performance of your USB disk drives, but then you cannot just remove those USB disk drives instantly from your PC. Removing the disks without ejecting them first can cause the cached data to be lost or even worse – the file system on these disks can become corrupted.
In order to be able to remove the USB disk drives instantly without waiting for the disk caching to work and flush all the data, then you can enable the quick removal mode for your USB disk drives, SD cards and pen disk drives. Here is how:
- Press the hotkey combination Win+R to open the Run dialog. In the run dialog, type devmgmt.msc and press Enter.
- This will open the device manager window. Here you have to locate your attached USB removable disk drives under the Disk Drives category. Select the USB disk drive, right-click on it and select Properties.
- In the properties window, switch to the Policies tab and then select the Quick Removal Policy. Click OK to save the settings.
- That’s it, now the disk caching should be disabled for that particular disk and you can quickly remove it from you PC without worrying about the data loss.
Conclusion: If you are experiencing data loss or disk corruption whenever you remove the USB disk drives from you PC, then you can enable the quick removal policy for it. This will reduce the disk performance a little but you won’t lose any data when disk is suddenly removed.