[Technical] RE: safe removal of usb memory sticks

[Clark, Ian C]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tech-bounces at edulists.com.au 
> [mailto:tech-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Ware, Kevin Ke
> Sent: Tuesday, 28 February 2006 11:22 PM
> To: Technical Discussion in Schools Mailing List
> Subject: safe removal of usb memory sticks 
> 
> 
> 
> Hi guys
> 
> I have a questionabout the safe removal of memory sticks on a 
> windows xp system.  Do you need to click the small icon on 
> the taskbar to safely remove hardware.  After 1 year + of not 
> following this procedure my memory stick has an error and has 
> stopped working.
> 
> Is this a coincidence?

Hi Kevin,

It could be just a coincidence ... floppies suffered from mechanical
failures, so you could get damage to this file or that ... but USB keys
are electronic and can just die altogether, from a power surge or a
wiring break.

Like all disks, corruption can occur when the stick is withdrawn or
power cut to it as it's being written to (ie the LED on it is flashing,
rather than constant). And, like all other disks (including hard
drives), several small writes may be delayed and then handled as one
later transaction. It's called write caching, and has performance
benefits for your CPU and disk system.

When you click on Safe Removal of the hardware, one of the things that
does is to commit any waiting data in the cache to your memory stick.

If you think that you'll be able to keep a good eye on the state of the
LED, you can go to My Computer, choose the Properties of any of the
disks, go to the Hardware tab, bring up the Properties of your USB
drive, go to the Policies tab, and choose "Optimize for quick removal".

Cheers,
Clarky


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