Tech myths debunked

You always need to 'stop' a USB device before unplugging it: This is another of those statements that's valid only under certain conditions. The idea behind saying this is to ensure that the USB device is not unplugged while data is being read from or written to it. Doing so would corrupt the file being transferred. But, if the device is idle, there is no need to go through the 'Safely Remove Hardware' drill. Note that in Windows Vista however, if you have set a USB flash drive to act as a Ready Boost device, you will need to 'stop' the device before unplugging it. For other devices such as keyboard/mouse, printers / scanners, etc., you can just unplug them provided they are not currently in use.