Thumbs drives are very delicate per my IT person...What gives with that?

[Brett Miller]

I've seen a Thumb drives v/s the ultra small HD comparison in Maximum
PC and the Thumb drives proved to be very durable.
Now, our IT person has bought everyone in our "Company" whooping 128
meg ( yes, 128 meg not KB) thumb drives. He bought them in a large
lot of a couple of thousand. Now people are having trouble with them.
He is citing user error. I have several thumb drives from 512 meg to
2 gig. I put them in, copy what I need and rip them out of my system.
No problem.
However, at work, the IT guy has sent out an email telling us that
they are very delicate and we need to do all them stuff to get them to
work and to close out programs that may use them before removing them
from the computer. Does any else have to do this to avoid problems?
Is anyone else having problems with thumb drives? My guess ( and I
really could be wrong ) is that he bought some really CHEAP thumb
drives and he doesn't know what he is doing. Tell me what you think.
Here is the email he sent us.

Thank
bReTt

For those with the USB thumbdrives, here is some useful information:

Thumbdrives are finicky at best; every so often they will stop working
in a PC. If this happens you can try a few tricks to get it back.
Try rebooting the computer to see if it just decided to get moody on
you.
Try connecting the thumbdrive to another (and different make)
computer. Sometimes the thumbdrive actually drops its own driver and
has to have it replaced…and only a different computer than the one
where it happened can do that.
Try running Windows Update on the PC with the issue talking to the
thumbdrive. It could be a problem with Windows and a quick update can
suddenly get it back on track.
Always, always, always properly remove the thumbdrive. This is done
by left clicking once on the green arrow at the bottom right corner of
your desktop. It will pop up a window with all the USB connected
devices that you currently have. Click on the one that is your
thumbdrive (you will need to know the letter designated for your
thumbdrive…E:, F:, G: etc). Another window will pop up after you
click on your thumbdrive and it will tell you that it is safe to
remove the drive (or it will say that the drive is still in use and
cannot be stopped, if so close all programs that you might have been
using with the thumbdrive such as Word, Powerpoint and such).

 

[Bob Day]

I've seen a Thumb drives v/s the ultra small HD comparison in Maximum
PC and the Thumb drives proved to be very durable.
Now, our IT person has bought everyone in our "Company" whooping 128
meg ( yes, 128 meg not KB) thumb drives. He bought them in a large
lot of a couple of thousand. Now people are having trouble with them.
He is citing user error. [ snip ]
My guess ( and I
really could be wrong ) is that he bought some really CHEAP thumb
drives and he doesn't know what he is doing.

My guess is that you're absolutely right. Can you give us more
info on these 128MB thumb drives, such as the brand and model,
or some other information to identify them?

-- Bob Day
http://bobday.vze.com

 

[JAD]

let me guess ' Buslink ' drives utter crap

 

[John Doe]

Thumbdrives are finicky at best; every so often they will stop
working in a PC.

Mine from Corsair and Kingston work just fine.

However, you probably don't want to remove the drive while data is
being accessed, read or written.

Another window will pop up after you
click on your thumbdrive and it will tell you that it is safe to
remove the drive (or it will say that the drive is still in use
and cannot be stopped, if so close all programs that you might
have been using with the thumbdrive such as Word, Powerpoint and
such).

I think that particular caution is correct. Windows probably should
say "Safely Remove Hardware" before you attempt to remove the flash
drive. Here, I think that's usually any time after the drive light
has gone out. My use is manual, I don't have programs accessing the
USB drive.

Physically, I expect there are problems with some people trying to
force a memory stick into a USB port the wrong way. Some people
might not see a need to put it in right side up, and maybe right
side up is not clearly indicated.

 

[ducky]

However, at work, the IT guy has sent out an email telling us that
they are very delicate and we need to do all them stuff to get them to
work and to close out programs that may use them before removing them
from the computer. Does any else have to do this to avoid problems?
Is anyone else having problems with thumb drives? My guess ( and I
really could be wrong ) is that he bought some really CHEAP thumb
drives and he doesn't know what he is doing. Tell me what you think.
Here is the email he sent us.

<SNIP>

i have never had any major problems with a thumb drive and i NEVER do
the safely remove hardware. i have heard thought that if the drive is
formatted with the NTFS file system, that they will corrupt very easily
if you don't do safely remove. Other than that it sounds like your IT
guy bought crappy drives. Or he is one of those IT guys that always
chalks problems up to user error because he is too proud to admit that
he doesn't know the answer.

AR

 

[`AMD tower]

sounds like flawed drives to me. I've been using them for years and just
pulling them out with no problems at all. win98 use to hollar at me for not
doing it properly, but since win me, i don't think i've seen a message, and
they have never not worked. I defrag them every once in a while when they
start slowing down.
I even forgot i had one in my pocked once and washed my jeans. It was one of
the early 64 meg jobs from Trek, called a smart thumbdrive. It didn't lose
any data at all and it is still in use. matter of fact, I was using it
today, and this drive is pretty old. So yeah, sounds like there was
something wrong with some of the drives in the batch he bought.