Card readers

[aam1234]

Is it ok to just unplug the card reader or it's better to disconnect it from the PC first.

Thanks

[sGu]

make sure you disconnect the device first, or unmount device if you use Mac, before you remove card reader or card, ALWAYS!

[aam1234]

opps :oops: been just yanking it from the pc. Thanks for the advise.

[Cadwell]

:lol: I just pull the card out of the reader. I've never bothered to "safely unplug hardware" - that's just Windows being pretentious in my book. Life is way too short to humour it with it's grandiose ideas of having a proper grown up file system. :lol:

[Scottes]

I concur!

I do shut it down most of the time, but really who cares? It's not going to do any harm.

[Jon]

With XP, I'll just pull the card most of the time. With earlier versions of Windows, I'll go through the Eject process. You don't, however, want to pull the card the instant the little light goes out, and doing an Eject gives it some recovery time.

[PacAce]

With the later OS, it really doesn't matter as long as you're not writing to the card. With older OS, pulling the plug could cause the OS to hang for a brief period or for a long time.

However, if you also have external hard drives that you plug into the USB or Firewire port, then it really is good to get into the habit of unmounting or ejecting the device first 'cuz what you don't want to do is pull the plug from the harddrive when you've been writing to it. Something about a "data lost" error message that leaves a nasty taste in your mouth.