Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/08/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Tina, I apologize for bringing up this subject again, but I have finally caught up with reading the mailing list messages and don't see that anybody responded to this statement: On Thu, Jul 21, 2005 at 05:42:49PM -0400, Tina Manley wrote: > Yes, I have that little icon that tells you that you can unplug the > hardware safely, but that is only for hardware that is not "plug and > play". All of my external hard drives are plug and play and I shouldn't > have to use the icon for them. You _have_ to use that icon (or something similar) before removing any disk that you have written data to. Plug and play is the technology (or faith :-) that when you connect a device to your computer, it will give the operating system the information required for it to recognize the device and do whatever it needs to do in order for both to work well together. It cannot work the same way when you unplug it. Once the device is unplugged, it is too late to tell the operating system that it better flush all buffers to the disk before it goes away... I see that you did not unplug the drive, so this was probably not the reason for your problems. But it is dangerous to assume that plug and play allows you to unplug and pray! There is a possibility that the drive was accidentally disconnected by a problem with power management even if it was not physically disconnected or turned off by you. I also suggest that after you do a backup you close the backup program and then use the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon to make sure the OS is finished with the drive. Anyhow, please don't think that you can uplug a plug and play drive without the risk of losing everything in it. Emilio