It’s one small step for man, and a giant leap for mankind – gone are the days where we fear of corrupted files due to unproper USB ejecting procedures. Microsoft have included in their latest Windows 1809 update a change in how USB drives are ejected.
With the Windows 10 update, the default removal procedure for USB drives will be set to “Quick Removal” which removes the need for the “Safely Remove Hardware” process, and allows you to unplug your device just like that.
A report by MS Power User explains that there are two protocols that the OS can run when reading and writing on a USB drive – Quick removal and Better performance. The Quick removal policy makes it so that the system is always in a state that’s prepared to eject a USB drive , but at the cost of speed as Windows cannot cache disk write operations.
Meanwhile, Better performance is just that – this policy caches write operations, making data transfers faster, but users must perform the Safely Remove Hardware process to protect the integrity of the data within the drive.
With the default option set to Quick Removal with the new update, users can still opt for Better performance by following these steps: When a device is connected, right click on Start and select Disk Management. Right click on the desired drive and select properties. In the Policies tab, select Better performance in the Removal policy options. Your system will now default to Better performance when writing on USB drives. Just be sure to safely remove your disk before ejecting.