Flash Drives
You use a flash drive the same way that you use a floppy.
To move files to the drive can be done in various ways
- Right-click the you want and do a send to. When the send to menu appears, choose the flash drive
- Open the flash drive in windows explorer and paste the file
- Save the file in the drives location when you do save as
Note: the root of the drive can only hold so many files. Fort the drive to use the full size of it's capacity, you will need to store the files in folders.
Flash devices degrade each time data is written to it. They generally become unreliable after they hit about 10,000 writes.
They are also prone to breaking due to being inserted and removed. Therefore if you have any important files on them, make sure they are backed up.
The flash drives are also called memory drives.
The drives come in numerous capacities. Below is a list of the capacities (there may be more than what is listed here)
- 64 Meg
- 128 Meg
- 256 Meg
- 512 Meg
- 1 Gig
- 2 Gig
Format flash drive - How to format a flash drive in NTFS
Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP and newer
To use the flash drive, you just plug it into an available USB port. The system will assign it the next available drive letter. The drive letter assignment will be different on each system depending on the configuration of the system.
You will use the drive just like you would a floppy drive. You can open it in My Computer and Windows Explorer. You can copy and paste files into it just like you would a floppy. You can save files to it in programs like Word and other programs by clicking File, Save As and choosing the flash drive. Some systems include the flash drive on the Send To feature.
Windows 98
You can use the flash drive in Windows 98 if you have the driver for the flash drive. Windows 98 does not have the driver built in. You will have to go the manufacturer's website to download the driver for it. Some manufacturers have a driver for it and some don't.
For information on how to rename a flash drive, click here.
For information about drive letter assignments to a flash drive, click here