What is Safely Remove of flash drives for?

[blue s]

does it really affect the data inside?..or is it just for the safety of the hardware?..how about for digital camera? will not ejecting it properly result to reformatting the cam?..and lastly what are the other reasons that makes flash drives not eject properly, aside from having files of the flash drives open?... thanks a lot!

 

[abhi]

data would be corrupted

 

[chazrunner]

I think the concern is that a file might be written while you are taking the flash drive out. This would corrupt the file.