USB eject?

[smurph]

I am trying to teach my dad how to disconnect a USB memory stick and it is proving quite difficult, something that I believe is over complicated.
His new PC has USB keyboard & mouse, which I can't stand and a waste of a USB port, but which I don't want him to mistakenly eject, which is very difficult when they are not labelled well in the list.
Why don't they list better names in the Safely Remove Hardware list?
Can a name be entered for devices on this list?
Is there a simpler way to do this?
Is there a piece of software?

 

[Nitestick]

you could either right click on the drive itself in "My Computer" and click eject or you can left click on the icon in the system tray and select the drive from there.

 

[smurph]

Great, didn't know you could select eject from My Computer, excellent.
The taskbar option is the difficulty, as they are all labelled the same "USB Mass Storage Device", even though one of them is keyboard & mouse, and proves very difficult to establish which is which!

Your fist option leads to another question, there are 4 or 5 items all labelled the same as "Removable Disk" in My Computer, asume card reader slots in new PC, how do I now distinguish between them and the one I want to remove?

Is there a way to rename these permanently?
Should they be there?

 

[Baez]

Yes they should be there. You can disable the ones you don't use if you want to though. To rename them just right click on the drive icon and click on rename at the bottom.

 

[MetalOwns]

Does anyone actually eject flash drives? I just pull mine out when I'm done with them...

 

[carnageX]

Does anyone actually eject flash drives? I just pull mine out when I'm done with them...

I always eject mine...

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

I have seen a few USB jumpdrives become useless because of hotplugging, and one computer with dead usb controllers.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

I've had 2 flash drives crash now, because I pulled them straight out instead of ejecting like I usually do, so yes. definately eject before removing

 

[Alvin.C]

Hello,

Personally, I don't eject removable storage devices which are 'optimized for quick removal', which by default, all removable storage devices are - in Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

I've not experienced any data corruption or failure of any of my USB flash drives from not ejecting them before removal. Still, I make sure I that only remove the removal storage device when data is not being written to it and I regularly check the drive for errors.

Here's an article on the topic: Hyperzone! - Safely Remove Hardware, or Not?

 

[Preacher]

I didn't eject my 1st gen Video iPod , and it went dead after like 2-3 years which seems about right , but my new 160gb iPod I do eject.