So I turned my ps4 on today and it's telling me that the console was not shut down properly. And that not shutting it down properly could cause damage to data or the system hardware. First of all, what kind of damage could even be done if the system was on standby? And I know for a fact that my system was off when I unplugged it. This was honestly one of the concerns I had with leaving the system in standby. Where if there was a instance where the power cut out if it could damage the system at all.

Have you had this happen to you randomly? I'm just curious if it's a common thing.

If the system has its power cut while it is writing data, that data can become corrupted. While in Stand By mode, the system may write data sometimes, making it unsafe to unplug.

Personally, I don't use Stand By mode, as I like the certainty of the system either being fully on or fully off. Disabling Stand By also saves electricity.

I used to turn my fat ps3 off with the big I/O flip switch in the back. Eventually it caused the bluray laser to fail and I had to replace it. The system needs to shut off properly, or it could cause unwanted shock (by that, I don't mean electrical. A better word would probably be stress) to any number of the components. Mostly, I think, this affects moving components (HDD, disc drive/laser). Might be wrong about that.

You say it showed the warning even though the system was completely shut off when you unplugged it? Not sure what's up with that. All I know is you should only ever move the console/unplug it when the big led light on the top of it is turned off. So when it flashes white when you shut it off, don't unplug, because its still in the shut down process. Maybe that's what happened?

@savage: but it wouldn't do damage to any system components like GPU, CPU, or etc? Far as I can tell my data is fine

@rongalaxy: it could be. I honestly thought I did shut it off completely (I'm usually very careful about these things) but probably it wasnt completely off. I mainly just want to be sure no internal component damage was done. Everything seems to load and play normally.

You know this did randomly happen to me a few times and I never figured out what caused it. I wouldn't worry too much about damage honestly. It's not gonna mess up anything serious. Your saves maybe you could lose. But the hardware can't be broken like that. I think for that to happen you'd have to pull the plug while a disc was spinning and even then, I dunno. Based on my other disc-system experience consoles can take a hell of beating. Power surges are the only real danger. Worst case for this "accidental error" you need to factory reset and update firmware manually, then pull saves down from cloud if you have that feature.

Maybe it was the Swiffer? I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist.

The only time it's likely to cause damage/data loss is if it was reading/writing data when it was unplugged. I wouldn't worry about it in this case, it's more of a precautionary warning so that you can't go complaining to Sony if data is lost after pulling the power cable at the wrong time

@mb: ha ha, touché

@geraltitude: yeah. Like I said, far as I could tell the system wasn't writing data or anything. It was either in standby mode or in the process or shutting down when I pulled the plug. Far as I could tell all my save data is intact. My main concern was graphics hardware or things like that.

As far as I'm aware there is no threat to the hardware from pulling the plug. Safeguards are in place to protect the hardware against power blackouts and other such events

@stinger061: that's good. Anyway, games seem to be playing fine. I assume if there was a hardware issue or damage it would have manifested itself immediately.

I actually had something similar happen to my PS3 when I first got it oddly enough. It would tell me the system wasn't shut off properly and wasted a few minutes checking all the files to make sure nothing was corrupt. I never unplugged or it anything either, this happened after turning it off right from the XMB.

@turtlebird95:

Huh, weird.

I think it's a legal thing. If something goes wrong, you can't blame them for not shutting it off properly.

There are safeguards in place to prevent nasty stuff from happening when you yank the cord. The system has it's own psu, so it has some time to prepare for power off and finish what it's doing before it shuts off completely. That said, if you improperly shut it off every single time, you're taking your chances more and more of the system not being able to do that.

This happened to me yesterday. My PS4 won't completely start-up anymore. I tend to turn it off completely before I unplug it, but my friends don't take care of their shit like I do. One of my friends unplugged mine while it was in standby and now it's broken and I have to send it in.

@sethphotopoulos: oh man that sucks.

@gruebacca: so there are precautions made in the hardware to avoid component damage to the processors or motherboard? I mean, I assume as long as I'm seeing graphics then everything is running fine, right? My main thing is that I hope the games look as good as there suppose to and there isn't a GPU issue.

I just had this happen last week. System was on standby when there was a momentary brown out in my area. When I turned on the PS4 later I received the same message you did, but as far as I can tell, nothing was effected.

@stryker1121: that's good. I'm considering doing abinitilization just to be safe, but it takes so long to do.