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Can't write to flashdrive?



 
 
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  #1  
Old May 16th 11, 11:14 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
mm
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 459
Default Can't write to flashdrive?

A friend may have removed her USB flash drive without the proper
procedure, just pulled it out.

A) If you haven't written to the flash drive for, say, 10 minutes, and
you know all your writes concluded 10 minutes ago, do you really have
to use that procedure? I can't remember, and her know-it-all son says
No.

B) She can read from the drive but not write to it.

What's the next step? Running chkdsk?

C) She has to keep her client records for years to come. Should she
also burn CD's to hold them. Should she print them out?


Interestingly, she bought a second USB flash drive and it wouldnt'
work either. It didn't display the slightest message when she plugged
it in. The guy at Office Depot where she bought it said her OS was
old (she has XP SP2, but she didnt' remember that.) and he said it
couldn't find the drivers! Turns out the drive was too fat to go into
one USB slot, but it worked fine in the other!


She's retiring in two weeks and she has to take all her personal and
client files off the Board of Education laptop, so she'll have a copy.
And she has to remove them all so whoever sees the computer next won't
see them. The files are records of her psychological sessions with
public school students.
  #2  
Old May 17th 11, 04:49 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
RnR[_2_]
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Posts: 3,394
Default Can't write to flashdrive?

On Mon, 16 May 2011 06:14:37 -0400, mm
wrote:

A friend may have removed her USB flash drive without the proper
procedure, just pulled it out.



xp has a setting which allows you to just pull out the flash drive or
have to go thru the proper sequence to do this. I accidentially
stumbled upon this once.
  #3  
Old May 18th 11, 02:27 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
mm
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 459
Default Can't write to flashdrive?

On Mon, 16 May 2011 22:49:07 -0500, "RnR" wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011 06:14:37 -0400, mm
wrote:

A friend may have removed her USB flash drive without the proper
procedure, just pulled it out.



xp has a setting which allows you to just pull out the flash drive or
have to go thru the proper sequence to do this. I accidentially
stumbled upon this once.


I'd love to know more. Do you mean left clicking on the icon in the
systray and then clicking on the little rectangular box that shows up?
Her son just showed me that Sunday night.

Thanks everyone for your replies.
  #4  
Old May 18th 11, 02:36 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
Tom Cole
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Posts: 32
Default Can't write to flashdrive?

On Tue, 17 May 2011 21:27:37 -0400, mm
wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011 22:49:07 -0500, "RnR" wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011 06:14:37 -0400, mm
wrote:

A friend may have removed her USB flash drive without the proper
procedure, just pulled it out.



xp has a setting which allows you to just pull out the flash drive or
have to go thru the proper sequence to do this. I accidentially
stumbled upon this once.


I'd love to know more. Do you mean left clicking on the icon in the
systray and then clicking on the little rectangular box that shows up?
Her son just showed me that Sunday night.

Thanks everyone for your replies.


With a flash disk inserted,
Device manager, Disk drives, double-click the flash disk,
Policies tab. Select 'Optimise for quick removal'.

It's still safer to also click on the icon in the systray when
removing.
  #5  
Old May 18th 11, 04:00 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
mm
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 459
Default Can't write to flashdrive?

On Wed, 18 May 2011 13:36:10 +1200, Tom Cole
wrote:

On Tue, 17 May 2011 21:27:37 -0400, mm
wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011 22:49:07 -0500, "RnR" wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2011 06:14:37 -0400, mm
wrote:

A friend may have removed her USB flash drive without the proper
procedure, just pulled it out.



xp has a setting which allows you to just pull out the flash drive or
have to go thru the proper sequence to do this. I accidentially
stumbled upon this once.


I'd love to know more. Do you mean left clicking on the icon in the
systray and then clicking on the little rectangular box that shows up?
Her son just showed me that Sunday night.

Thanks everyone for your replies.


With a flash disk inserted,


I guess I don't see this, because I usually don't have a flash disk
inserted, especially when I'm wandering around screens like Device
Manager.

Device manager, Disk drives, double-click the flash disk,
Policies tab. Select 'Optimise for quick removal'.


Ah, disable write caching. Yes, I can see why that is important here.

It's still safer to also click on the icon in the systray when
removing.


Okay. I'll still do it.

Thanks a lot, Tom.
  #6  
Old May 20th 11, 03:40 PM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
William R. Walsh[_2_]
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Posts: 931
Default Can't write to flashdrive?

Hi!

B) *She can read from the drive but not write to it.


What's the next step? * Running chkdsk?


If the drive is readable, back up everything that is on it. I strongly
suggest that you do NOT run chkdsk (it cares only about file system
consistency, and will destroy data to make the filesystem consistent).
But if you simply must, or feel that it will help, back up the data
first.

C) *She has to keep her client records for years to come. *Should she
also burn CD's to hold them. *Should she print them out?


Never put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak. If the information
is this valuable, it should be stored across multiple, differing media
in various physical locations.

Interestingly, she bought a second USB flash drive and it wouldnt'
work either. *It didn't display the slightest message when she plugged
it in. * The guy at Office Depot where she bought it said her OS was
old (she has XP SP2, but she didnt' remember that.) and he said it
couldn't find the drivers! *Turns out the drive was too fat to go into
one USB slot, but it worked fine in the other!


Nearly all USB mass storage devices (external hard drives, flash
drives, etc...) use the generic mass storage class drivers built into
the operating system. There are few exceptions, mostly older hardware.
Any version of Windows 2000 or later has built in mass storage class
drivers that will work fine for just about anything.

William
  #7  
Old May 25th 11, 06:40 AM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
mm
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 459
Default Can't write to flashdrive?

On Fri, 20 May 2011 07:40:40 -0700 (PDT), "William R. Walsh"
wrote:

Hi!

B) *She can read from the drive but not write to it.


What's the next step? * Running chkdsk?


If the drive is readable, back up everything that is on it. I strongly
suggest that you do NOT run chkdsk (it cares only about file system
consistency, and will destroy data to make the filesystem consistent).
But if you simply must, or feel that it will help, back up the data
first.

C) *She has to keep her client records for years to come. *Should she
also burn CD's to hold them. *Should she print them out?


Never put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak. If the information
is this valuable, it should be stored across multiple, differing media
in various physical locations.


I emailed her 9 days ago, and called her cell and left a message 8
days ago. I called her house and left a message with her husband 5
days ago that she should read her email, and I called at dinner time 2
days ago. I finally got her.

It's true I'm sure that she's writing final reports on everyone of her
clients (students) and she has to get them finished by today iirc.
Monday she spent 7 hours straight to do 3 of them.

She hasn't read her email, and she's out of time, so rather than
copying the records from the computer to the CDs, it will probably be
from the new flash drive to the CDs. That will probably give the same
result, and any errors will probably never be noticed, becuase she
will probably not actually have to read her record ever again. If the
kid gets a new psychologist, he'll read her report that she is in the
process of writing and submitting (and saving for herself) and then
start down his own path. If the kid doesn't, still people will mostly
go by what happens in front of them and their opinions about it.

And if she does need a report again, it likely won't have the errors
or they will only affect one or two words, so she'll understand it all
anyhow.

The important thing is, I tried. I'm a little annoyed that she
didnt' get back to me at all in a week, but she's very nice to me lots
of time (I eat there several times a year and I'm invited for more.)
so I should forget about that.

Interestingly, she bought a second USB flash drive and it wouldnt'
work either. *It didn't display the slightest message when she plugged
it in. * The guy at Office Depot where she bought it said her OS was
old (she has XP SP2, but she didnt' remember that.) and he said it
couldn't find the drivers! *Turns out the drive was too fat to go into
one USB slot, but it worked fine in the other!


Nearly all USB mass storage devices (external hard drives, flash
drives, etc...) use the generic mass storage class drivers built into
the operating system. There are few exceptions, mostly older hardware.
Any version of Windows 2000 or later has built in mass storage class
drivers that will work fine for just about anything.


Yeah, the Staples guy didn't know what he was talking about. I'm
glad I said that firmly to her before I noticed the flashdrive didn't
fit in the jack. She too noticed that the computer did absolutely
nothing when she put it in the USB jack, but she didnt' think to use
the jack the mouse was in!

William


Thanks a lot.

  #8  
Old May 25th 11, 01:49 PM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
Bob Villa
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 488
Default Can't write to flashdrive?

On May 25, 12:40*am, mm wrote:

The important thing is, I tried. * I'm a little annoyed that she
didnt' get back to me at all in a week, but she's very nice to me lots
of time (I eat there several times a year and I'm invited for more.)
so I should forget about that.


You have done more than required. It is, after all, her problem, not
yours!
  #9  
Old June 12th 11, 02:52 PM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
BillW50
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Posts: 1,698
Default Can't write to flashdrive?

In ,
mm wrote:
[...]
Yeah, the Staples guy didn't know what he was talking about. I'm
glad I said that firmly to her before I noticed the flashdrive didn't
fit in the jack. She too noticed that the computer did absolutely
nothing when she put it in the USB jack, but she didnt' think to use
the jack the mouse was in!


You have mentioned this a number of times in this thread. And there is
an easy solution to this problem. As they sell short USB extension
cables. I like them for this reason, plus they save wear and tear on the
computers USB ports. And now all of the wear is on the extension USB
cable that can be easily replaced if it ever goes bad.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo 1.83G - 2GB - Windows XP SP3


  #10  
Old June 12th 11, 03:00 PM posted to alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
BillW50
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,698
Default Can't write to flashdrive?

In ,
mm wrote:
On Wed, 18 May 2011 13:36:10 +1200, Tom Cole
wrote:

[...]
With a flash disk inserted,


I guess I don't see this, because I usually don't have a flash disk
inserted, especially when I'm wandering around screens like Device
Manager.

Device manager, Disk drives, double-click the flash disk,
Policies tab. Select 'Optimise for quick removal'.


Ah, disable write caching. Yes, I can see why that is important here.

It's still safer to also click on the icon in the systray when
removing.


Okay. I'll still do it.

Thanks a lot, Tom.


Along these same lines, there is a program called "USB Safely Remove".
It works far better than the one built into Windows. And I use it on all
of my computers. It is one of those programs that once you use it, you
never want to be without. ;-)

http://safelyremove.com/

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core Duo 1.83G - 2GB - Windows XP SP3


 




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