USB pen drives

FeFiDoh

FeFiDoh

FeFiDoh

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Joined
17 Aug 2005
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Swindon
Ive got a 128mb pen drive thing and was wondering after my last one just broke for some reason, when im finished putting stuff onto it is it safer to use the "removable device" thing from taskbar or can i just take it out?
 
If the Safely remove hardware icon apears when plugging the usb drive in then use it to disconnect.
 
I have a 1 GB pen drive (bought from OCUK) and I always play it safe by using the 'safely remove hardware' option.

It is probably safe just unplugging it, but I don't want to take the risk! :p
 
i used to pull out mine, now its gone dodgy read only, all the files are there i just can write to the disk any more (no it doesnt have a push down read only thing.)

so in my new one i ALWAYS ALWAYS use safely remove.
 
I used to use the safely remove hardware icon but after a few times of being in a hurry and just unplugging it I just use the latter now. I think it sort of depends. Flash disk's I pull out, but my ipod I use the safely etc function..
 
If it's flash memory i pull it out, if it's a HDD, like my mp3 player etc then i safely remove. I've messed up my mp3 player before by just pulling it out :(
 
USB Flash Drives - I always just yank 'em out of the PC. :)

When you have the drive plugged in, fire up windows explorer and right click your drive. Bring up the Properties. On the last page you should see the details of the caching policy. For Flash drives this will be set to allow quick extraction, but for those mini-hard disks this will normally be set for speed.

This is the bit that makes the difference with Quick Extraction. So even a normal hard drive can be converted to a quick extraction one using these settings. (Though I think these settings are "per OS" not "per drive", so they need to be changed on each PC)
 
MAllen said:
USB Flash Drives - I always just yank 'em out of the PC. :)

When you have the drive plugged in, fire up windows explorer and right click your drive. Bring up the Properties. On the last page you should see the details of the caching policy. For Flash drives this will be set to allow quick extraction, but for those mini-hard disks this will normally be set for speed.

This is the bit that makes the difference with Quick Extraction. So even a normal hard drive can be converted to a quick extraction one using these settings. (Though I think these settings are "per OS" not "per drive", so they need to be changed on each PC)
Click to expand...
My Seagate pocket drive was set to quick extraction by default.... Well that makes things easier ;)
 
Flash drives are fine, howerver hard dives are not. Here is a list of things that has happenned to mine through not removing it properly, has happenned when the PC has crashed or been reset (sometimes it was windows that reset the computer too).

-Corrupted Data files (recently written files contain garbage)
-Partial data written to drive with segments missing
-Recently written files not present when plugged into another PC
-All files written during a session missing when plugged into another PC
-Partition becomes hidden

Luckily, most of them are recoverable using Partition Magic, Stellar Pheonix (recovers deleted files) or by copying the files to the drive again. However i no longer user it to store important information.

I must say this is on my LACIE 40GB external USB hard drive which is host powered. Normal External drives should not suffer from this as much because they have a seperate power supply or battery (iPod).
 
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