text: the dangers of unplugging your computer? so what exactly is the problem if you just unplug your computer before turnnig it off (besides obviously losing all unsaved stuff)? there shouldn't be any additional problem. if you unplug the system while it's running, the hardware won't be affected. the only hardware that could have a problem would be anything that's moving like disk drives. the drives are set up so that if the electricity is removed, the heads back away from the platters.  so other than the potential for data loss through incomplete writes or corruption, you should have no hardware issues.