To avoid any unlikely incident like loss of data, Windows prompts you to Safely remove hardware like external hard drives and USB drives. Even after doing this, if the USB port continues to remain ...

It survives reboots, updates, and years of inactivity — Windows never cleans it up.

Does it matter whether you ‘Safely Remove’ devices, as Windows requests? Yes. If you pop a memory card out of its reader or pull an external drive out of its USB port while Windows is reading or ...