Is there a way in Win2k/XP...

[Concillian]

This bugs me. I use a flash drive a lot, mostly at work, where I may need to transport files often between different computers. I can pull it out of the USB slot when I know it's fine to do so and windows bitches.

Okay, so I want to tell Windows to umount the drive, so I click on the icon in the system tray, tell it to stop the device, tell it again to stop the device then verify I want to stop it.

Is there a method I'm missing? It's pretty annoying to have to go through this song and dance every time. Usually I just rip it out and close the warning message. In linux I just have to issue a umount command and remove it, is there a simple method like that in windows?

 

[imported_Phil]

Just rip it out and ignore the warning. Works fine for me.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Phil
Just rip it out and ignore the warning. Works fine for me.

Don't, if the write cache isn't flushed you will thrash the drive. The way to do this is turn off the write cache on the drive (should be in drive properties), with that off it should be safe to remove as soon as the led on the thumb drive stops showing activity.

 

[Leros]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: Phil
Just rip it out and ignore the warning. Works fine for me.

Don't, if the write cache isn't flushed you will thrash the drive. The way to do this is turn off the write cache on the drive (should be in drive properties), with that off it should be safe to remove as soon as the led on the thumb drive stops showing activity.

Is this something that will change the property of the actualy drive (I do it once and it workson all computers) or just for that one computer?

 

[bsobel]

Unfortunately you have to do it on each computer...

 

[firewall]

There is a Safely Remove Hardware icon in the task tray. Left click it ONCE. An option will come up saying:

Safely Remove Mass Storage Device - Drive(X: )

where X is your USB Flash drive letter.

Click this option. The balloon tip stating that it is safe to remove hardware will pop up and you can take it off. It will save you opening up multiple confirmation dialogs and the like.

It's a two-click solution, not a one click one unless you make an app for such a purpose yourself.

 

[RVN]

Originally posted by: asadasif
There is a Safely Remove Hardware icon in the task tray. Left click it ONCE. An option will come up saying:

Safely Remove Mass Storage Device - Drive(X: )

where X is your USB Flash drive letter.

Click this option. The balloon tip stating that it is safe to remove hardware will pop up and you can take it off. It will save you opening up multiple confirmation dialogs and the like.

It's a two-click solution, not a one click one unless you make an app for such a purpose yourself.

Nice tip! Thanks.

 

[corkyg]

Here's what I do with all removable media drives in XP. I disable write caching. Then they can be pulled safely any time, and Windows will not say a thing.

Go to Device Manager, highlight the media drive, right click for Properties, then select the Policies tab. There are two check boxes - check the top one and not the "performance" one. That disables write caching for that drive.