USB Drives

Memory devices which plug into the USB slot come in various sizes and styles.

• Pen drives
• Camera memory cards
• External hard drives

These devices are all portable and allow you to store copies of stuff. They also allow you to transfer stuff to and from your computer. Stuff is any sort of file or collection of files and/or folders that does not exceed the capacity of the device.

Pen drives range in size up to 16Gb or so and are great for transferring stuff from one computer to another. They may also be used to backup your system if there is not too much to backup.

Camera memory cards are used to hold your photos and may also be used for storing stuff. They are similar in size to pen drives and can be removed from the camera and plugged into a USB card reader attached or installed in your computer.

External hard drives (storage units) are simply a hard drive mounted in a case with a USB cable. These have large capacities up to 1Tb and more. A 320Gb unit is a very useful portable backup device. The larger capacities are often physically larger, require a separate power supply and are not so convenient as a portable unit.

Problems.

1.    The device is not recognised. When you plug the device into the USB slot you should hear a sound which indicates the system has reacted. Next, a window appears, looking at the contents of the device. Finally, a window indicates the drive letter of the device and offers options. Sometimes this fails. There may be a sound recognising the plug in but nothing else happens. The most common reason for this is that another device has been previously plugged into and removed from the socket which has created a recognition problem. This is very frustrating and can be troublesome to resolve. Usually a re-boot fixes the issue but occasionally even this does not succeed. Magically, next day it all works. What a bugger. You are not the first to have this problem.

Moral: Avoid using multiple pen drives.

2.    Cannot safely unplug the device. To unplug a USB memory device, you should click the icon in the system tray to safely remove the device and then if all is OK you can pull it out. If you copy a lot of stuff to the device and then try to safely unplug it, Windows will often inform you that it is unsafe to unplug it. This will always happen if you have and Explorer window open so you will soon learn to close all windows before you try to extract the device. Closing everything often still will not solve the problem.

Eject USB is a useful program to solve this problem. Click on the link and choose Run and the defaults. It will be copied to your computer. After copying, to run the program, choose the entry in Start/Programs. Now try the correct removal method - all should be well.