Practical Application How to Use a Flash Drive Practical application How to Use a Flash Drive Page 1 of 6
About this Practical Application Prerequisite Skills To use this Application you will need be comfortable using a keyboard and mouse. How to use This Practical Application can be printed or alternatively you can work through this document on screen by changing between the document and the My Computer window. Objective To become a confident user of a storage device. To be able to save, delete and add files to this device whenever needed. Practical application How to Use a Flash Drive Page 2 of 6
Background What is a USB Flash Drive? USB flash drives are memory data storage devices integrated with a USB (universal serial bus) connector. They are typically small, lightweight, removable and rewritable. Flash drives are meant as a way to get files to and from multiple computers. They are NOT for backups. With nothing being mechanically driven in a flash drive, the name is somewhat of a misnomer. It is called a "drive" because it appears to the computer operating system (and the user) in a manner identical to a mechanical disk drive, and is accessed in the same way. Advantages USB flash drives can offer potential advantages over other portable storage devices, particularly the floppy disk. They are more compact, faster, hold more data, are more reliable due to their lack of moving parts, and have a more durable design. It has become increasingly common for computers to ship without floppy disk drives. USB ports, on the other hand, appear on almost every current mainstream PC and laptop. What can you store on a Flash Drive? Any digital file from a Word document, photograph, and music (MP3 and other formats). The file can be saved and retrieved from any computer just like a floppy disk or CD. Cost A USB Flash Drive can be brought at a reasonable cost from any electronics store including Dick Smith from as little as $14.00 for 256MB of storage to $30.00 to $40.00 for 1GB of storage. Practical application How to Use a Flash Drive Page 3 of 6
Copying files to a flash drive on a PC: 1. Open My Computer by double clicking on the My Computer icon on your desktop (and see which drives are shown). Most computers, for example, have a hard disk such as a C:/ and a few removable storage devices such as a floppy drive, and a CD-ROM drive. 2. Insert the flash drive into the USB port. Most USB ports are now on the front of a PC but if you can t see them there look on the back of your PC. Watch the left hand panel to see where the USB flash drive appears. If a pop up window appears asking if you wish to view the storage device click OK.. Flash Drives will generally appear as removable storage or bar, but some will appear as hard drives. Note the name Windows is using to refer to the flash drive ("Removable Disk (D:) or bar (D:)," for example). 3. Navigate to My Documents or a location from which you want to transfer files to the flash drive. Select the files or folders you want to save to the flash drive by left-clicking on them. To select more than one, hold down the CTRL key while you click and select all of the files you wish to save. Practical application How to Use a Flash Drive Page 4 of 6
4. Right-click on the file(s) or folder(s) you selected, then select Send to, select the name you saw appearing in My Computer for the flash drive ("Bar (D:)," for example). 5. When the copying is finished, do not immediately remove the flash drive from the USB port. Instead, left-click on the Remove Hardware icon located in the System Tray. A window containing a list of the USB devices will appear. Left-click on the Safely Remove Mass Storage Device line that matches your flash drive (for example, Safely Remove Mass Storage Device - Drive(G:)). 6. When you see the following message appear in the bottom left toolbar, it is, as it says, safe to remove the flash drive from the USB port; you may close the message or ignore it, as it will close itself automatically. Practical application How to Use a Flash Drive Page 5 of 6
Saving files to a flash drive on a PC: 1. You can also save files directly onto your Flash Drive as you would to a normal drive, floppy disk or zip disk. In your application for example Word click on file>save As. 2. Navigate to your Flash Drive for example Bar (F:). Then click save. Your document whatever this may be is now saved onto your Flash Drive. 3. To safely remove your drive please follow number 5 and 6 on the following page. Practical application How to Use a Flash Drive Page 6 of 6