Microsoft Makes Changes on How to Safely Remove External Drives

Microsoft is changing the default way Windows works with external drives.

Currently, Windows has 2 ways of dealing with the process of writing data to external drives such as Thumb Drives: Quick removal and Better performance.

Quick removal:

This policy manages storage operations in a manner that keeps the device ready to remove at any time. You can remove the device without using the Safely Remove Hardware process. However, to do this, Windows cannot cache disk write operations. This may degrade system performance.

Better performance:

This policy manages storage operations in a manner that improves system performance. When this policy is in effect, Windows can cache write operations to the external device. However, you must use the Safely Remove Hardware process to remove the external drive. The Safely Remove Hardware process protects the integrity of data on the device by making sure that all cached operations finish.
With Windows 10 1809 Windows will default to Quick Removal rather than Better Performance, which should mean more safe operation, but also slower performance due to less caching.

If you always remove your drives safely you may want to switch the policy back to Better Performance using the following steps:

1. Connect the device to the computer.
2. Right-click Start, and then select File Explorer.

1. In File Explorer, identify the letter or label that is associated with the device.
2. Right-click Start, and then select Disk Management.
3. In the lower section of the Disk Management window, right-click the label of the device, and then click Properties.
4. Select Policies, and then select the policy you want to use.

Note: If you select Better performance, Microsoft also recommend that you also select Enable write caching on the device.