Published Oct 24, 2026, 7:30 AM EDT

Rob LeFebvre is an editor and writer focusing on consumer and enterprise technologies for a broad range of outlets. He’s been writing online for more than 15 years; before that he was a special educator for kids with severe disabilities.

Rob has been an Editorial Director at Lifewire, a news writer at Engadget, and a senior contributor at Cult of Mac. He's written about PCs, Macs, mobile phones, and games, created newsrooms from the ground up, and has extensive experience reviewing hardware, software, and games across his career.

I've right-clicked that little USB icon before unplugging a flash drive for most of my computing life. It turns out that Windows stopped requiring it years ago, though, and Microsoft even says so in writing.

Ejecting your drive used to be genuinely good advice

Why the ritual made sense

Windows has long warned us all that pulling any storage without ejecting can cause data loss, and that warning used to have a solid technical basis.…