Whether you call them jump drives, flash drives, thumb drives or USB flash devices, by any name they are as handy as pockets and destined to replace floppy disks as the medium for saving and transferring files. Already they represent a cheaper alternative if you calculate the cost per gigabyte. A 4 Gb USB flash drive that costs in the neighborhood of $60.00 has a cost per gigabyte of approximately $15.00. If you can get 1.44 Mb floppies at a dime apiece the cost per gigabyte of storage runs well over $60.00.
As handy as these devices are, I have noticed a problem with them on occasion. It seems that, while Windows Vista will recognize and load drivers for the device, some USB Flash drives are not immediately usable. Fortunately this is can be remedied without a system restart.
With most tasks in Vista, one starts with the newly designed stat button. This case is no exception. Clicking the start button brings the start menu into view, which has also been redesigned.
On the right hand column of the start menu right click on the "Computer" entry. On the resulting context menu click on "Manage". In Windows XP this feature was available via right clicking "My Computer" and in both XP and Vista the Computer management console is started.
In the left hand column of the Computer Management console click on "Disk Management".
The center column of the console will clear and in a short time you will be able to view basic drive information. Direct your attention to the bottom of the column to view graphic representation of the data. Notice each drive has a number in place of a letter. If you have your flash drive plugged in and it has not been recognized, it will show up here as "Unknown" and "Unreadable" as shown in the circle. Since this picture has been resized, there isn't enough detail here to tell that the square each disk number is in is actually a button. For this reason the bottom right corner is an actual size view of these buttons. Even in actual size it is hard to tell, however, the "Disk 1" button has already been left clicked.
Clicking the drive button selects it for tasks to be performed, which in this case will be a refresh. At the top left of this window left click "Action". On the drop down menu, left click "Refresh".
Shortly after selecting "Refresh", drive information will appear for your jump drive indicating its availability to the system. The one shown here is a 512MB model and small compared to the multi-GB models available these days.
This particular problem with flash drives may or may not occur with Windows XP. We haven't encountered it with XP due to the fact that our XP machines do not have front mounted USB ports. Burning files to a CD is much more convenient than reaching around to the back of the computer case to swap out flash drives and limits the use of USB devices with these older machines. We have noticed a problem in removing jump drives on machines running Windows XP Home edition.
For those who are not familiar with the use of USB devices, Windows XP and Windows Vista come equipped with "Safe Hardware Removal" tools. This tool is accessed from the system tray. Although the icons are different between the two operating systems, the tool works the same way. Right clicking the icon in the system tray results in the "Safely Remove Hardware" balloon. Left clicking on this balloon opens the "Safe Hardware Removal" dialog.
Another way to open this dialog is to double left click the icon in the system tray. Either way the dialog instructs you to select the device you want to remove from the list of attached devices. Once you have clicked on a device to select it, click the "Stop" button at the bottom.
After clicking the "Stop" button, you will see the "Stop Hardware Device" dialog. If you are sure you want to remove the jump drive click the "OK" button. If you have remembered a file you wanted to copy, click "Cancel" and the drive will remain available to the system.
If you clicked the "OK" button in the "Stop Hardware" dialog, you will receive the "Safe to Remove Hardware" message box. You have gone to far to stop now so click the "OK" button and remove your flash drive.
Once you have clicked "OK", you will be left with an empty "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog. The circle in this graphic encloses a larger view of the system tray icon. If your monitor is smaller than 20" inches it is hard to tell what these icons are. This dialog in both versions of Windows provides a good view. At this point all that is left to do is click the "Close" button and remove the USB device if you haven't already done so. Although you don't have to turn off the computer to remove USB devices, flash drives do have to be removed then plugged back in if you want to use them again without restarting your computer after you have reached the "Safe To Remove Hardware" message box.
If you are using Windows XP Home Edition, you may well see this warning dialog when removing your UFD. As mentioned earlier, this problem seems to be confined to the Home Edition. Click the "OK" button on the warning then close all the safe removal windows. Repeating the process from the beginning seems to do the trick.
There are those who just yank out the flash drive without using the procedure described here. This will not cause harm to the computer or flash drive because USB devices are designed for this. If you have been performing file transfers to and from the UFD these tasks might not have finished. Due to the way Windows performs drive writes. you might not have usable files or even be able to find them. Using the "Safely Remove Hardware" process insures all file transfer tasks have been completed and all files involved are usable.
Update
This update is the result of a customer telling me "it is great to know how to get UFD's to work and how to safely remove them but how do you use them when you get them plugged in". It was only then that I realized that I had become focused on the erratic behavior of these devices and a solution. It had slipped my mind that these devices are relatively new and that there are those not comfortable with computers and computer accessories. Hopefully, these pointers will remedy the situation.
To copy a file to your flash drive, open the folder in which you have the file to be copied stored. When you have your file located, single right click the file. This action results in a context menu with several options. The option I most often use is the "Send To" item on this menu. Slide your mouse pointer down to this option and hover to receive another menu. My wife used this flash drive until getting a larger one. Somewhere in that time frame she changed the "Volume Label" to "My New Toy". The point is the volume label goes with the device and is the same on any computer to which you choose to connect it. Getting back to the subject, left click the volume label of your flash drive on this second context menu and your file will automatically be copied to the flash drive.
To copy a file from the flash drive to a computer you can use the same process. If you double check the second context menu, you will see that there is an option to "Send To" the "My Documents" folder. When you have your UFD plugged in and all is well, the Windows auto play feature should open a dialog similar to that shown here. Left click the action of your choice in the central scrolling window. In this case, the "Open folder to view files" option was selected. If you want the selected action to be the default action whenever an USB flash device is plugged into the computer, then left click the check box at the lower left corner of the scrolling window. The final step with this dialog is to left click the "OK" button.
A Windows Explorer view of the contents of your flash drive opens. The title bar should show the volume label of your flash drive. Locate the file you wish to transfer. Right click the chosen file, hover on the "Send To" selection and left click "My Documents" on the sub-menu and you have accomplished your task.
If you want to copy files to a folder that is not listed in the "Send To" menu the task is only a bit more complicated. You have the choice of "copy and paste", "cut and paste" or "drag and drop" techniques. For either you will need to open a second "Windows Explorer" screen. Windows Explorer is located on the "Start Menu", "All Programs" then "Accessories". In the screen shot above notice that the right click menu has a "Copy" selection. Left click "Copy" then right click your destination folder in the second Windows Explorer. On the resulting context menu left click the "Paste" item and you have completed the "copy and paste" technique.
The "cut and paste" technique is similar to the "copy and paste" procedure just described. Instead of left clicking "copy" on the context menu you left click the "cut" selection. Then use the same steps as in the "copy and paste" technique. The major difference in these techniques is the result. When you "cut and paste" files the folder of origin will no longer contain a copy of the file. The draw back to this technique is that if you loose power before the task is complete you will also loose your file.
The "drag and drop" transfer technique is actually a graphical variation of "copy and paste". To use this technique you may want to first resize the two Explorer windows in order to have a clear view of both windows. Next you will want to make sure you have a view of the file you wish to transfer in the Explorer view of your flash drive and a clear view of the destination folder in the second Explorer window. The arrangement of the windows is purely a matter of personal preference. The screen shot here has the flash drive Explorer on the right and the destination Explorer to the left. The file icon/thumbnail in the flash drive Explorer has been circled to point out that this file has been "selected". The 'selected" condition is what you want to watch for in the other Explorer as you "drag" the file to its chosen destination.
Place your mouse pointer on the file to be moved then press and hold down the left mouse button. As you move your mouse toward the destination window a transparent icon of the file will appear. When you move the pointer/icon combination to the destination folder, move your mouse around until the destination folder has been selected. This is the "drag" portion of the process. In the picture the selected destination folder is a blue highlight color, yours may be different as this is a user configurable feature. Once the destination folder is in the selected state, release the mouse button and the file icon will disappear completing the "drag" portion of the technique.
Once you have become familiar with these techniques, you will realize that it is possible to accomplish them with one Explorer window open. The Explorer on the left in the pictures is the one that you need. View the files to be moved in the right pane and the destination folder in the left pane. When transferring files from one computer to another, it would be a good idea to first scan the flash drive with your anti-virus program. The original mode of travel for computer virii was hitching a ride on floppy disks. This mode of travel will work on flash drives as well.
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