I'll be buying a new computer...

[zedd151]

Magnus, yes "hot-swapping" USB drives may cause data corruption. I learnt that years ago. USB drives are a little more robust these days, but if it is still being written to when unplugged, whatever it was writing at the time will be corrupt.
In around 2006 or so I unplugged a USB flash drive at an improper time. It rendered that flash drive unusable. It could not be reformatted either. "Unknown device" or some such error was given in that instance. It was relatively inexpensive thankfully, and most of the data was also stored elsewhere, so not a huge loss either way.

[daydreamer]

Hot swapping with smartphone /tablet can cause more damage,because its similar to destroy c: drive on PC when internal SD card is wrecked
Of course cloud based or internet used to transfer might be safer
Physical remove tiny micro SD card and place in USB stick converter might be safer for internal drive,but I hate to use my strong hands to fiddle with tiny micro SD removing/ reinstalling with risk of break things

External drives cheap these days and I already own many external drives ,so keep one USB stick connected at all times adding aviable HD space,there are now tiny USB sticks that only extends few millimetres from USB port

[zedd151]

Don't even get me started on those tiny micro SD cards. While they might be perfect solutions for digital cameras due to their size, they have a huge drawback - their tiny physical size.

I once had a 64 GB micro SD card that I used for additional storage for a netbook (mini laptop) that I had purchased at a very good price. The netbook only had a 32 GB hard drive which was only big enough to contain the Windows 10 operating system. I had the micro SD card already, and the netbook conveniently had a port for it.

I had 50 GB worth of code, installers, programming related tools, some other miscellany... I had discovered it was missing one day, and lost forever.

I think the vacuum cleaner had eaten it, but still never found any trace of it.

Many of the installers are no longer available, and some I do not even remember the names of. A big tragedy back then.