Does Homebrews damage external hard discs???

[lesnar1234]

well....in windows you have "safely remove hardware" option...when we click on it then our hard disc stops rotating and the light goes off....and then we disconnect it from our computer....

but in case of these homebrews(OPL, ulaunch, FMCB and others), there is no such option....and to disconnect the hard disc we have to directly pull out the usb connector of hdd from PS2 while the hdd is still rotating/working..... will these damage hard discs????

[flahrgenstow]

actually from what i understand there is an option in windows which allows your external device to be unplugged on the fly.

there is a maximum performance setting

and there is a quick connect setting
or something like that in the disk settings in windows.

i just assume that ps2 runs something like the quick connect mode where nothing is cached away for later.

anyway ive been using my 640 gb external for a few months now with these loaders and with SMS with no problem.

of course i stop the video or turn off the game before i unplug so no actual transfer or reading is taking place

[lesnar1234]

of course i stop the video or turn off the game before i unplug so no actual transfer or reading is taking place

but the hdd is still rotating/working right???? so isnt it improper removal of the device????

[SP193]

but the hdd is still rotating/working right???? so isnt it improper removal of the device????

Let me explain what that "Safely remove device" icon really does.

Windows tries to be newbie-friendly, and provides a system to prevent inexperienced/careless users from causing filesystem corruption when they deliberately (Or accidentally) unplug the device when Windows/some program is writing data to the disk. If data caching was enabled, Windows caches data and needs to know when the disk is going to be disconnected, so that it can flush the data to the disk (Prevent data-loss).

Windows 98 supported USB mass storage devices (With a 3rd party driver) too - but didn't come with that "Safely remove device" icon (So we users had to be sure that the disk wasn't in use before we unplugged it).

You're right that the disk is spinning when you unplug the disk (Actually, this is also true when you use Windows... not only OPL) - but modern HDDs (Since the 1990s) are designed to automatically park their heads when power is lost.

So in other words - don't worry. As long as you take care of your disk, everything will be fine.

actually from what i understand there is an option in windows which allows your external device to be unplugged on the fly.

Somehow... even though it's written that you CAN unplug your device without notifying Windows first (If you didn't enable data caching/"Maximum Performance")... it may not be so wise to do that.

I don't know why... but I had lost lots of data that way with Windows XP (It still caches/reads/writes data behind my back!!) when I used NTFS on my disk.