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    What did your research tell you? A quick Google search for "why do i need to shutdown my computer instead of pulling the power" will find numerous answers... And yes, you can damage your hardware, but the risks are low, but there is a definitely a chance of corrupting or losing data.
    – acejavelin
    Commented Mar 9, 2016 at 21:47
  • 1
    If your hardware supports this and the system you're working with is completely accessing any storage in read only mode and the system is not operating hardware that must be shut down with some procedure (e.g. some TV tuner cards, modems, ... ), then there's no problem just cutting the power. Such systems are ... rather hard to find, though.
    – Daniel Jour
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 1:08
  • 7
    Related/duplicate: superuser.com/questions/6863/…, superuser.com/questions/179242/…, superuser.com/questions/103861/…
    – Bob
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 1:37
  • 1
    Older hardware was less tolerant of sudden power loss. But modern hardware is tolerant of sudden power loss. Desktop systems tend to require an orderly shutdown. Embedded systems can be tolerant of sudden power loss. Embedded Linux often uses JFFS2 and UBIFS filesystems; "Both UBI (see here) and UBIFS are tolerant to power-cuts, and they were designed with this property in mind.". Note that these are read/writeable filesystems.
    – sawdust
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 4:08
  • 1
    @DrZoo it was (still is) identical in XP if you run it on a system without an ATX power supply. I used to use some test kit with a standard XP pro PC built in.
    – Chris H
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 11:29