On Friday 19 August 2005 13:17, Shriramana Sharma wrote:
Yes of course, but the point I was making was that I did not need to unmount (aka flushing write data to) the USB device in Windows, and was allowed to remove it once there's no program writing to it.
That's because the device driver provided by the manufacturer took care of the writing (sync), as opposed to the OS. In Win2k and later writing to a USB device was made a part of the OS. In other words, MS provided generic, all purpose device drivers that controlled their functionality.
Of course, I've also been told that under Win 2K or XP too I can do the same. I usually take the safe way out - humour Windows and use the "unplug safely" function.
Failing to 'eject' the USB device properly may not _always_ cause you issues; however, I can tell you -- speaking from experience -- that at some time you will have problems if you simply remove the device. Especially when you take into account the file system associated with your USB device -- most are FATx. The FATx file system is _very_ unforgiving when it coming to writing (sync) data to it. Truth is, nothing prevents you from removing the USB device from your machine, whether the OS is using it or not.
But my q still stands. How come Win 98 doesn't give me a tray app for unmounting the USB device? Of course, such a complaint is better on a Windows list, but still, if Win 98 could do it, Win 2K or Win XP could too, just tell the user that the device can be pulled out when there's no write operation.
Because that functionality was not made a part of the OS until Win2k came along. In earlier versions of Windows, such as Win9x, that functionality was provided by third party device drivers, not the OS. -- Christopher Shanahan