Safely Removing Flash Drives
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- DISCUSSION
Flash drives, also known as thumb drives and pen drives, are replacing CD ROMs, 3.5-inch disks, and zip disks as the most common personal storage media. Flash drives are small, lightweight removable data storage devices that easily plug into the USB port on your computer. These drives are so convenient that it is easy to pull it from the USB port and go about your business before your data has actually finished saving to the drive. To ensure information has been successfully loaded to the flash drive, click the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon located in the system tray before removing the flash drive.
- PROCEDURE
To safely remove a flash drive:
- Confirm that all activity has stopped on the flash drive. A good indicator is that the flash drive has stopped flashing.
- Right click on the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray located in the lower right-hand corner of your screen (see Figure 1).
Figure 1
Select “USB Mass Storage Device” in the Safely Remove Hardware dialogue box.
Click “Stop”.
- Select the USB drive in which the flash drive is located. (see Figure 2).
Figure 2
Click OK.
- When it is safe to remove the flash drive, a message box stating “Safe to Remove Hardware” will appear in the system tray (see Figure 3).
Figure 3
- Remove the flash drive from the USB drive and click OK to close the Safely Remove Hardware dialogue box.
