I’ve gotten into many arguments regarding the proper removal of USB flash drives from computers. I say you have to click to eject, others say just take it out.

Doing a bit of research I found this article by Rob Verger in Popular Science:

Pull a USB flash drive out of your Mac without first clicking to eject it, and you’ll get a stern, shameful warning: “Disk Not Ejected Properly.”

But do you really need to eject a thumb drive the right way?

Probably not. Just wait for it to finish copying your data, give it a few seconds, then yank. To be on the cautious side, be more conservative with external hard drives, especially the old ones that actually spin.

That’s not the official procedure, nor the most conservative approach. And in a worst-case scenario, you risk corrupting a file or — even more unlikely — the entire storage device.

I hate this. Doing it wrong can create a corrupt file. A corrupt file can basically destroy the USB flash drive. I’ve lost a whole external hard drive because of accidental “Disk Not Ejected Properly” notices.

Do it the right way.