Hammer wrote:
> Sometimes, when I use "Safely Remove Hardware" (Win XP Pro) it will
> say something to the effect of "Try again later" and I hear no activity in
> the hard drive.
> What risk (s) am I taking by diconnecting the drive when "Safely Remove"
> says to wait ??

Data loss. Operations can be cached, and if you prematurely disconnect
your drive, they can be lost.

If you're using XP, get the Hardware Properties of the device in
question. (Right-click the drive in My Computer, Select Properties. Go
to the Hardware tab, select the drive again and click Properties
button.) On the Policies tab, you should find an option that marginally
controls the write caching for the drive. This may or may not alter the
way your drive behaves.