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USB

I was using the computer in the boardroom at work, and someone had left their USB memory stick plugged in. “No worries”, he said. “Let me eject that”. He moved the mouse to the USB icon in the Taskbar, waiting for the balloon help text to pop up (it says “Safely Remove Hardware”), and then said “there you go, you can pull it out now”. He expressed total surprise when I explained that you need to right-click, and go through the rigmarole of manually stopping the device in question. “That explains why these things always break for me.”

This was written by Lloyd Kranzky. Posted on Saturday, April 18, 2009, at 22:40. Filed under Work. Tagged . Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

4 Comments

  1. Tim wrote:

    True! But you can actually just left-click (in Windows XP anyway) on the devices icon in the taskbar, and then click on the plugged-in device to eject it safely. No right-clicking required :)

    Saturday, April 18, 2009 at 22:51 | Permalink
  2. RB wrote:

    Meh, I never bother. Usually usb sticks break because they’re cheap and nasty. My 8mb Imation and 512mb Sandisk are still going strong. ;)

    Sunday, April 19, 2009 at 18:14 | Permalink
  3. admin wrote:

    I was amused because he was trying to do the right thing, but fell at the first hurdle (i.e. misinterpreting the bubble help). Remind me to tell you about an IT Consultant mate of mine next time I have a beer in my hand…

    Sunday, April 19, 2009 at 23:10 | Permalink
  4. Rich wrote:

    You can also configure USB devices so they don’t write cache, and you can remove them without ejecting.

    Man, I’m such a geek…

    Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 18:27 | Permalink

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