I need help with a SanDisk flash drive

[Anna_D]

Hello everyone. I'm doing a thesis on a friend's computer which is an XP Pro. This is very important to me and my grip on how to protect it is quite tenuous. It's pretty big and I don't want to lose it.

At this moment it's saved to his hard drive and I've a link on the desktop but I want to have another copy. Last week I bought a flashdrive. It's called, SanDisk Cruzer, micro 2 GB. I know where to plug it in but I'm afraid if I do something wrong I'll lose my work.

Do I plug it in when the computer is off?

What will happen when I plug it in? Will I get a page telling me how to save my work to it? I want to continue saving it to the hard drive, and to this thing so there will always be the two copies.

Will it tell me how to do this or is that assumed?

It's a cute little thing and it's hard for me to believe it can save so much. Goodness, there is so much happening in the computer world!

Any advice would be wonderful. Thanks in advance.

Respectfully,

Anna.

[Drufuss]

Hi Anna.

I have a SanDisk Cruzer, micro 4 GB but haven't done too much with it until now.

All I know is that when you plug it in while te computer is off, after booting the pc will install the necessary drivers to use the flash-drive (only the first time you plug it in), after that you will see to additional drives in your explorer window.

When you plug it in when your computer is on, it will also start some preinstalled software, that is thought to provide some help and support for someone who wants do save specicific data to the stick (backup copies just liek you want to do).

But, i haven't used this software myself so far, so i can't say anything about it being usefull and easy to understand or not. Maybe i'll have a look at it later today.

Greetings

Dru

[BoWevil_abx]

Hi Anna: I have a SanDisk Cruzer. It is really easy to use. You can plug the Cruzer into your computer when it is running. When you have finished making changes to your thesis, you save the changes to your Cruzer (you can identify the drive letter assigned to the Cruzer by going to "My Computer"). To safely unplug it while the computer is running, click on the small green arrow icon located on the task bar in the lower right part of the desktop. This will open a dialog box, and just follow the prompts. When you finish that, the computer will tell you that you can safely remove your hardware.

[jaketerminate]

Its perfectly fine to plug it in while your computers running, but when you want to remove it be sure to "Safely Remove Hardware" by left clicking this icon: and clicking Safely Remove USB Mass storage device. If you have multiple USB devices be sure the one your ejecting is the right one!

[ctal]

There are various ways to do the actual saving. You'll probably want to use one of these two methods: "Save As" under the File menu while the document is open; or navigating to the document's icon within My Computer or My Documents (or wherever it is) while the document is closed, selecting the icon by single-clicking it, and then using the "copy this file" function that will be offered on the left side of the screen.

Always try to be conscious of where you are saving to. Depending on the program or the method you are using to save, the default save location (if you don't specify) may be where you last saved something to, or where you opened the document from, or to My Documents, or perhaps even something else.

Regards,

-- Al

[Anna_D]

Hello ctal, jaketerminate, BowWevil_abx and Drufuss.

Thank you so much for answering my question. It's so important to me. I'm not working on it tonight because I'm so tired. They made some of us work late tonight and I had a full day at school.

I really am grateful to you men for your help and tomorrow I'll follow through with your suggestions. I really want to keep saving it to this hard drive as well as to the flash stick thing so I guess I will need to save it twice every time. It's a comfort to know I will be able to do this.

I'll come back tomorrow night and tell you how it went. Thanks again, you're all very special for going to all that trouble for me.

Anna.

[ctal]

You're welcome!

You are smart to anticipate the need to back up important work, before learning the hard way! Someone I know of lost a nearly completed book she had written due to a hard drive failure, although fortunately she had a hard-copy print-out of it. As you've realized, hard drives can and do fail, and without backups on physically separate media, a disaster is waiting to happen.

Feel free to ask for any clarifications to the preceding posts that may be necessary.

Regards,

-- Al

[Rickwell]

Hello Anna_D.Glad things are working out for you.When you make a second copy.You should get it out of place where the other copy is.Just incase of fire or the dog gets hungry.I make images of my Operating systems and get a 2nd copy some place else away from the 1st copy.You never know when that great flood might come by.

[Anna_D]

Hello again all. Again I apologize for not being here but it seems I have become mother to my friend's family so this is taking time away from me and I still haven't had the time or courage to do the save.

Thank you Rickwell for the good advice. I understand what you're saying and it makes good sense.

Al, (ctal), I had my work saved to his hard drive then one day I decided to also save it to a floppy. When I did this, every part of my work disappeared from the hard drive and that's what scared me and caused me to buy this flash stick. That and the fact that the floppy got filled up and I'm in no way finished. Is it possible for this to happen again when I do the save to the flash stick?

Hi again to Drufuss and BoWevil and jakedeterminate. I hope your day is a nice one and it is giving you a nice direction.

Warm regards,

Anna.

[rjs735]

To prevent this from happening again when you do the save as use a version number. That way there is only one copy of each version and if you were to loose a version you would have only lost the last update.

I am also assuming you are using MS word student and teacher software?

It has the ability to keep revision and he auto labels them.

The thumb drive is a good idea and they are very inexpensive for even 2 and 4 GB models. Just make sure you eject the thumb driver correctly by using the stop/safe removal icon in the task bar. It has a small green arrow pointing to the left.

[ctal]

Hi Anna -- no need to apologize for anything . I can think of no reason why your document disappeared from the hard drive when you tried to copy it to a floppy (which, as you realize, can hold very little). Can you describe the methodology you used at the time -- did you use "save as" under the file menu in your Word program; or did you select the document's icon within a folder under "My Computer" or "My Documents," and use the "copy" function; or some other procedure?

I think rjs' suggestion about saving each update as a separate file is an excellent safeguard.

To gain familiarity and confidence with using the external flash drive, and saving to multiple locations (that and the hard drive), I'd suggest creating a different document in Word, just containing a few words, that you would use to experiment with and test your methodology.

In response to your question in the "New Member" thread, you can certainly post in that thread even though you now have a bit of seniority . But there is no need to as people will see your posts in this thread, either in the listing of recent posts on the home page, or by clicking "new posts" on the left side of the screen (which shows all posts that have been made since the particular person last visited, and which is a very nice feature of the board). And it is generally considered to be better form to not post about the same subject matter in multiple threads.

Best,
-- Al

[Anna_D]

Hello again Al, (ctal). I'm trying to remember about the floppy. I remember it came up as "drive A" as a place to save to and so I did but then all my work seemed to disappear from the hard drive. I had had it saved in "My Documents" but then when I went to that link I only got a response that told me to insert a floppy and that was a little distressing. Someone told me how to save it to the desktop, that is, what was on the floppy, and I have continued writing so now it's all on the hard drive with a link on his desktop. My friend who owns the computer doesn't understand any of this either.

I have been afraid the same thing will happen when I save to the flash stick thumb. As you can no doubt see, I'm not at all computer literate and I don't even understand some of the things you men say but I'm trying. I'm working on it and I'm so grateful for all of the nice help.

To gain familiarity and confidence with using the external flash drive, and saving to multiple locations (that and the hard drive), I'd suggest creating a different document in Word, just containing a few words, that you would use to experiment with and test your methodology.

Al, that is an excellent idea. I have to make breakfast now but when I get back this afternoon I'll do that. I should have thought of that by myself.

Anna gives herself a little smack on the forehead.

Thank you so much for your interest, Al.

Thanks to all of you!

Kind thoughts,

Anna.

[k0NG0]

When I wrote my master's thesis I regularly mailed a ZIP-ed copy to my Gmail account (I used TeX which is nothing like Word, but uses a bunch of plain-text files with various markup). I had the date in the name of the ZIP file for easy tracking.

I never did need those backups, but knowing they were there felt nice.

[zman88]

I believe that happened because you sent the folder to A. Next time when you have the doc opened, go up to the top left under file and hit save , not "send to" like is what I think you did. Once you do that you will see options of where to save and what to name the file. Hope this helps

[ctal]

Hi Anna,

One small but important amendment to ZMan's suggestion -- hitting "save" will not give you an option as to where to save and what to name the file. Selecting "save as" does that. Selecting "save" saves the document, in its most recently modified form, under the name and location from which it was opened (replacing the version which was opened with the current version including any changes you have made since opening it). "Save as" gives you an opportunity to save it to a different location (such as the usb drive), and with a name that you can modify if you choose to do so (such as with a different revision number in the name, which would create a new file under that different name, and leave the earlier version that was originally opened intact).

As far as what went wrong when you tried to copy to the floppy is concerned, I'm still not sure, beyond the possibility that ZMan suggested. Somehow you invoked "move" or possibly "send," rather than "copy" or "save as." But with a little experimenting on an unimportant document I'm sure you'll get the hang of it.

Best,
-- Al