MANILA, Philippines – Microsoft on Thursday, April 4, announced a change to Windows 10 that adjusts how it treats external drives.

Microsoft said that from version 1809 moving forward, Windows 10 will adopt the Quick Removal policy as a default state for external drives.

This change “keeps the device ready to remove at any time. You can remove the device without using the Safely Remove Hardware process.”

The trade-off, however, is that Windows cannot cache disk write operations, which it says “may degrade system performance.”

Previously, the Windows 10 default state for handling external drives was set to the Better Performance policy. In that mode, “Windows can cache write operations to the external device. However, you must use the Safely Remove Hardware process to remove the external drive. The Safely Remove Hardware process protects the integrity of data on the device by making sure that all cached operations finish.”

Users can check if they’re on Windows 10 version 1809 by going into their Settings page, Clicking on System, then checking out the About section for the Windows 10 version they’re on.

Meanwhile, you can change how Windows 10 treats your external drives this way:

• Connect your external drive to the computer and open file explorer to determine the label or drive letter associated with your external drve.
• Right click Start, then select Disk Management.
• Once there, click the label of the device, then choose properties. From there you can choose whether your Windows 10 install will treat the specific external drive as a “Quick Removal” device or “Better Performance” device.

– Rappler.com