Est-il sûr de unplug a blinking USB drive après 'safely' ejecting it?

[ForumBot]

There is beaucoup de information about how to safely unplug USB disque durs. Cependant, the articles tend to stop at the part where the operating system says it is safe to unplug, or where you're sure nothing is writing to the drive, etc.

Relevant set up:

- Windows 10 PC or Windows 10 notebook

- External USB disque dur (not a USB stick)

- Click "Eject External USB 3.0"

- Wait for "Safe To Remove Hardware" notice

After the operating system declares that it is safe to unplug a USB disque dur, the LED on the drive blinks about 10 times before the drive shuts down.

I've used un certain nombre de external 1TB to 4TB HDDs by Toshiba and Seagate, and they all consistently blink their LEDs about 10 times when ejected. The blinking happens *after* the OS says it is "Safe to Remove Hardware". Although the OS is limited to seeing the completed buffer-flush whereas the drive's firmware can detect when the writes have completed, the 10 blinks happen even when the drive is just plugged in and immediately ejected with no writes at all. Likewise, it's still the same 10 blinks when the drive is written to extensively, then ejected.

Some theories:

-

The 10 blinks are just a courtesy to make it easier to identify which drive was ejected when multiple drives are plugged into a single computer.

-

There is a fixed latency between the OS flushing its write buffers and the writes getting physically encoded. This would explain why *any* non-zero amount of writes produces a fixed delay on eject. Cependant, the 10 blinks still take place if there was a long delay between writing and ejecting, or if there wasn't any (intentional) writing at all.

-

The 10 blinks represent a safety margin for the drive to park its heads. That sounds like a rather long time just to park heads, though, with each blink lasting about a second.

## So, is it safe to unplug the disque dur while its LED is still blinking?

J'ai essayé finding an authoritative answer, even checking on [Seagate's](https://www.seagate.com/au/en/search/?keyword=led%20blink) and [Toshiba's](https://www.toshiba-storage.com/products/toshiba-portable-hard-drives-canvio-basics-2/?pdf) websites, looking at the datasheet in the case of Toshiba. Je cherche answers that reference credible sources regarding what the drive does during the shutdown blinking sequence, to understand whether unplugging during that sequence is safe.

Here are some other areas I checked:

-

**Searching Google**: [is it safe to unplug flashing usb](https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=P1x-XYycFPLl_QarwZzADA&q=is%20it%20safe%20to%20unplug%20flashing%20usb&oq=is%20it%20safe%20to%20unplug%20flashing%20usb&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i22i29i30.6244.6244..6766...0.0..0.103.103.0j1......0....2j1..gws-wiz.Vprddo62_oo&ved=0ahUKEwjMt9XYldPkAhXyct8KHasgB8gQ4dUDCAs&uact=5)

I got a whole bunch of tips about how to safely unplug USB drives, but nothing to do with the USB.

-

**Searching Google**: [is it safe to unplug blinking +LED usb](https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=is%20it%20safe%20to%20unplug%20blinking%20%2BLED%20usb&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

Some other posts come up, mainly to do with troubleshooting, but nothing to do with the routine 10 blinks on eject.

-

**Searching Super User**: [[usb] [hard-drive] [windows-10] eject](https://superuser.com/search?q=%5Busb%5D%20%5Bhard-drive%5D%20%5Bwindows-10%5D%20eject)

This produces 7 results (or 8 results if I replace [[hard-drive]](https://superuser.com/search?q=%5Busb%5D%20%5Bhard-drive%5D%20%5Bwindows-10%5D%20eject) with [[external-hard-drive]](https://superuser.com/search?q=%5Busb%5D%20%5Bexternal-hard-drive%5D%20%5Bwindows-10%5D%20eject)), mainly about problems. Nothing about the routine 10 blinks on eject.

[ForumBot]

## Usually it is, do what the user manual says

If the drive's firmware is written correctly, it announces to Windows that it's ready to be ejected **when it is**. It is therefore safe to do so.

If the drive's firmware is written incorrectly, it may announce that it's ready to be ejected while still busy with important stuff. It's therefore not safe to eject it, but then, it is never truly safe to eject (or do anything else) with a drive which has a buggy firmware.

Par exemple, [here](https://www.toshiba-storage.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Canvio-Plus_UM.pdf) is a random HDD manual which says:

>


- Cliquez sur le “Hardware and Eject Media – icon”
A pop-up message box will appear listing the external devices
connected to your computer.

- Select the TOSHIBA drive to eject.
After a few seconds, you will get the notification that it is now safe
to remove the device.

- Click “OK” and vous pouvez unplug the drive now.


Note there's no mention of LED activity. Indeed vous devriez vérifiez le manual of **your** drive, and if it says "wait for the LED to blink out EJECT in Morse code", vous devriez absolutely do that. I'm yet to see such a manual though.

If you **absolutely** need your data to be there, verify the integrity of the data you have written, and make backups. Sinon, when your data on a portable HDD is gone, the fact that you have waited until the LED blinks ten times will be of little consolation.