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flash drives

17 years ago

I recently bought two 4G flash drives thinking they would be really good to store my pictures on. I did every thing that the instructions said about installing them, and when I wanted to take a look at them on my computer, nothing was there. I have Windows XP. Where did I go wrong????

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Comments (4)

genes
17 years ago
Installing them??? They should be just plug and play in your USB ports. If your computer is quite old, the computer may not recognize the newer technology. Oftentimes happens with people who's computers do not recognizes the 8GB and larger flashdrives.
When you plug it in, is there anything listed in Windows Explorer.
Double click on Window Explorer icon. Scroll down the left side menu to Computer. Click on the "x" beside computer to open it up. It should list your drives ie "C" drive (HDD normally) then "D" drive (probably your optical or CD/DVD drive) then possibly a new drive should show up with the flashdrive plugged in ie "E" drive.
Just make sure when you remove storage devices from USB ports to use the little icon down by the clock before removing these devices. Looks like a Little Green ball with a white check. Safe To Remove icon. If not you can eventully screw up your USB ports and the storage device
ravencajun Zone 8b TX
17 years ago
since you stated you are using xp, there is nothing to install, as genes stated. You just stick the flash drive into an empty usb port and it should show that it recognizes new hardware down in the systray, it does take a minute or so to do that then it usually will pop up the dialog box asking if you want to view what is on it or open a window etc, I just go to my files I want to save and right click on them and select copy to, it should show the new drive in that list to copy to and select that. Or you can drag and drop them if you prefer. If it is an entire folder you can just hilight that folder and transfer the whole thing.

and definitely use the safely remove icon and select the correct drive from the list.
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Gene, I never noticed or heard of that before. If these pictures are special to you may I recommend multi-copies over various media with a disk and a thumb drive at a minimum. The estimated life cycle of storage media is still in its infancy stage and are only approximations/estimates/guesses. No one really knows what the future may bring. So why not give yourself a little insurance by doing so. You may consider free on-line storage also. DA
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mystic_2008
Original Author
17 years ago
Thank you both very much for your advice. I will have to give it another try.
blabare
17 years ago
Also try a few different USB ports. Sometimes they get a bit flaky.

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