I have never, not once, used "Safely Remove Hardware" to remove any type of USB device, and have never experienced any problems. I usually make sure that i dont have any files open that are on the device, but sometimes i have left them open by mistake and they have just closed themselves, but no damage has been done to the device. If you ask me, the function is pretty useless, since i've never used it and never had any problems due to not using it.