<snipped>

robgraham wrote:
> I have taken out thumb drives a number of times without "Safely
> removing the hardware."
> And not a single byte of info was corrupted.
>
> Me too. It's just that when I was about to do this on a friend's
> computer he warned me not to.
>
> Is this rather like suggesting to someone that if they travel in a
> car they might die? It's true, but not very likely.

Yes. I guess you could say that. Your example is a bit extreme though.

It is technically proper procedure. You could do it a million times and
likely see no negative affects - but the one out of a million could be the
time that the data you have on there was the most important to you and (for
whatever bad reason) you also did not have backups of. ;-)

Backups are not required either - but people push them because it is the
*wise* thing to do.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html