USB DRIVE DATA RECOVERY

For those of you who have been using USB drives for years, you have surely built into your habits how important it is to ensure we safely remove the USB drive before removing it from the computer.

USB drives have been around for 20 years, is this still necessary? Should we still safely remove the USB drive from the computer? What does it actually mean to remove the USB drive safely? And what happens if we don't remove the USB drive safely? This blog aims to answer these questions.

What Is A USB Drive?

It has different names, pen drive, USB flash memory, USB drive. USB drives come in all shapes and sizes, with capacities ranging from 2GB to 1TB!

Power is not required to store data on a USB drive, due to its non-volatile memories. Not requiring power means there will be no moving parts, which means it won't be as susceptible to physical damage as a hard drive.

A USB drive is made up of different components:

Ø A USB connector that acts as the interface to the host.

Ø A storage controller so that the host system can access the device.

Ø A quartz oscillator to control the flow of information.

Ø A NAND flash memory chip for data storage.

Ø A cover that protects the main parts of the USB drive.

How Does A USB Drive Work?

When connecting a drive, a command is sent to make a read request. Most computers equipped with USB ports detect the inserted flash drive and install the necessary drivers to make it possible to read the data. Once it's connected to your computer you can store or retrieve data. When we save a file to a USB drive, the data is converted to a binary format and sent to the drive's NAND chip.

Before Flash Drives

Before flash drives existed, when it came to reading or writing files, operating systems treated disks as objects - objects that did not disappear in the middle of reading or writing. Some media even had mechanical locks that prevented them from being removed until the lock was unlocked by the software, thus preventing data loss or damage to systems.

All of this changed when the USB attached storage device was invented. By not having a mechanical seal, users could choose to remove the USB from the operating system at any time, which can cause damage to the data stored there.

What Makes Extraction Safe?

So what does that little button that we click to extract our storage device give us?

A safe extraction guarantees:

Ø The active writes have been transferred to the device.

Ø All programs receive notifications that the drive is to be removed.

Ø Alerts the user if there is a program that has not acted, with open files.

Ø Basically, it ensures that your data is safe!

What Happens If I Don't Safely Remove The USB Drive?

When you insert a USB drive into your computer, your operating system begins to use a process called write caching. The host device does not immediately complete writing of the information to the USB storage device. Instead, it caches some of that information to finalize later. Write caching allows applications to run faster by allowing them to continue without waiting for data write requests to be written to disk.

This all sounds wonderful, but in reality, caching can increase the chances of data loss occurring. If you remove your USB drive before or while the cached information is transferred, you will likely end up with a corrupted file. Safely removing the USB drive flushes the cache and remaining data, while stopping any processes running in the background.

Have you ever tried to remove your USB drive and got a "file in use" error message? This sometimes happens because something is running in the background without your knowledge, or the program is still connected to the USB drive, even when you are no longer using it. Removing the USB drive when we receive this error message can also cause data loss. In this case, it is better not to ignore the message and close the program in question. In case of data loss while ejecting USB, you can use Pen drive Data Recovery Software to recover all your lost data easily and quickly. You have might face this situations a lot of time because we used to eject pen drive without using eject button and regret if data gets lost or corrupt, but not now because you have an option of data recovery software from Pen drive, USB, etc.

Removing A USB Drive from a Windows Operating System

As mentioned above, write caching is the main reason why you should safely remove your USB drive. Those who have a Microsoft operating system may know that it actually has a feature that disables write caching on removable flash drives, reducing the chances of data corruption or loss.

A Windows feature called "quick removal" allows you to remove the USB flash drive at any time - although not recommended if you are actively writing files to the drive! This "quick removal" feature prevents Windows from continually trying to write to the USB drive, which is useful in case a quick removal is necessary.

However, it is noteworthy that Windows has not removed the feature (Safely Remove Hardware and Eject” from its Notifications Area, so it is obviously still considered to be important. If that is not a mixed message, no! I know what it is!

Pen drive data recovery software can also be used in windows if your files gets corrupted due to unsafe ejection of pen drive.

Conclusion

If you are not using Windows, then there is no doubt that you should continue to use the "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject" feature available on your computer. This ensures that the data will be completely safe and that there is no risk of data loss or damage.

However, according to Windows, if you have Windows 10, then it is not necessary to perform the safe removal before removing the USB stick.

But is losing data worth the risk? Especially when conflicting messages are posted on the Windows forum! And if we think about it, how long does it really take you to safely remove your USB stick? Almost nothing!

Therefore, it’s better to have a pen drive data recovery software if you lost a data while pen drive ejection which can save you from great loss.