Generally, in my experience, it's only bad if you remove the flash stick while data is being transferred too or from the device. Some programs may auto backup/save to a flash stick or still 'use' them when you aren't purposely saving, so safely removing hardware is obviously better, but for most cases it doesn't seem to matter.Safe removal of USB's. How pointless is this feature? Should I bother? Up until like two weeks ago, I had never ever heard of anyone having a hardware failure because they just snatched the usb out of the socket.