On 31 Aug 2009, at 06:38, Jesús Guerrero wrote:
...
I see Windows users do this all the time, without any problem
yet. Of course, the wait a little after writing to it, but a few
seconds
after the blinking stops seem to be enough.
Lucky guys. That, or when the file is not on the drive they come back
and copy it again without you noticing it. This happens lots of times.
I've seen it and I'll continue to see it as long as users don't
understand what's going under the hood. That's what the safe removal
feature in Windows is about, it's not there just to decorate your
try, it exists for a reason.
Indeed.
Macs complain if you pull a USB drive without safely removing it
first, and this warns users against doing it again in the future.
The problem with XP is that the "safely remove" icon is so small that
typical users don't ever notice it, and consequently don't know any
better. They're used to hot-plugging USB mice, keyboards & printers
into & from their laptops, so they don't see why a USB drive should be
any different. XP doesn't complain about a USB drive unsafely removed;
Vista's "safely remove" is slightly more obvious (available from a
right-click menu) but I don't know if any other improvements (IMO a
warning is important) have been made in Vista or Windows 7.
Windows does have an option which implies immediate syncs to USB
drives, and I'd guess that if this is selected the copy or save file
dialogues should remain on the screen until the whole file has been
written, thus discouraging the user from unplugging the drive mid-
write. I'm sceptical, however.
Stroller.
