I've noticed that Windows (never had this issue with *nix) systems often steadfastly refuse to unmount removable media. Usually I unmount the drive, but when that happens I remove the drive without unmounting. I think some application blocks unmounting, probably explorer. I'll have to see if crashing explorer.exe first lets me unmount next time.
Yeah I have that problem when I plug my N900 into my school computers sometimes. I wonder if there's any app you can install on the FAT storage to identify what's holding it up. I dunno if unlocker does that.
As an old-time Unix file system developer, I would advis you to always safely eject. Pulling power off a device while it is being written to is almost always painful if not fatal.
However: you can rest assured that the mac will never tell you to remove a device unless you have requested to first eject it or during an admin task such as a software update. Fact is, you can pull a device from the Mac anytime you want.
You can also rest assured that if you do happen to pull a device (from the USB port for example) wihout first ejecting it, your Mac will NOT be damaged. There are circuit protectors in place to protect from this. But that's not sayng your device may survive.
However: you can rest assured that the mac will never tell you to remove a device unless you have requested to first eject it or during an admin task such as a software update. Fact is, you can pull a device from the Mac anytime you want.
You can also rest assured that if you do happen to pull a device (from the USB port for example) wihout first ejecting it, your Mac will NOT be damaged. There are circuit protectors in place to protect from this. But that's not sayng your device may survive.
yep I think that's probably what he's saying, it's all about risk, I don't know the probability rate of this happening but something might go wrong and you lose some/all data, with my mac ejecting is a matter of adding a couple of seconds which really isn't much, so...I just always do it.
