USB flash drive Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Is it safe to back up important files to a USB flash drive?

Posted on June 1, 2023

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Question from Alan: Hi, Rick. I have a question for you.

I have a desktop PC that I use only for writing blog posts in Microsoft Word before uploading them to my WordPress blogs..

I plan to turn my blog posts into a series of books some day so I want to keep the posts stored on my hard drive in MS Word format.

Right now the 7 folders containing the posts and their associated images add up to a grand total of a little over 22 Gigabytes.

My question is do you see anything wrong with using a 64 GB USB thumb drive to hold backup copies of these 7 folders? [Read more…]

Q&A: Am I wrong to call a USB flash drive a ‘thumb drive’?

Posted on April 22, 2023

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Question from Craig: My friend and I got into a minor argument about the way you’re supposed to refer to a USB flash drive.

I call it a “thumb drive” and he says that’s incorrect.

I told him “thumb drive” is what lots of people call them and he told me they are wrong to call them that.

So in your opinion, which one of us it right? [Read more…]

Q&A: How can I protect the files on a flash drive from accidental deletion?

Posted on February 25, 2022

Question from Tim: I have three semesters worth of very important notes stored on a USB flash drive.

My friend wants to borrow that drive so he can use the notes to study for a certification exam.

I can’t afford to lose those files for any reason because they cannot be re-created or replaced.

Is there some way to prevent my friend from accidentally deleting the files from the drive? [Read more…]

Q&A: Do we still need to ‘eject’ USB flash drives before removing them?

Posted on January 13, 2022

Question from Keith: I always ‘eject’ my USB flash drives before removing them from the computer because I heard that not doing that could cause the drive to get corrupted.

Someone saw me eject a drive the other day and said we don’t have to do that anymore.

My question is, can we now just pull the drive out of its socket or do we still need to eject it first? [Read more…]

Q&A: Is it true that you shouldn’t store important files on a USB flash drive?

Posted on June 26, 2021

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Question from Colette P.: My daughter emailed me a really cute picture of my grandson while I was at work.

I saved the picture to my computer’s hard drive and then copied it onto a USB flash drive.

I verified that the picture was on the USB drive and then I deleted it from the computer (we’re not allowed to keep personal files on our work computers).

One of my co-workers happened to see what I did and she asked me if I always store pictures like this on thumb drives. I told her yes I do.

In fact, I have over a dozen thumb drives containing a total of several thousand photos.

My co-worker shook her head and told me it’s a bad idea to keep files I don’t want to lose on a thumb drive because they can get lost or go bad. She said I need to transfer them to some other kind of storage.

What’s your opinion on this? [Read more…]