Keeping the Flash Drive Occupied

Tom:
In Outlook, under Tools/Options/Mail Format, if you select "Use Microsoft Office Word "version" to edit e-mail messages, this behavior is true. If you don't use Word to edit e-mail messages, Outlook won't keep Word open. BTW, I'm using Office 2003, so I don't know if this behavior changes in later versions.

I too use Unlocker to see what programs have a file or device open that prevents either removal of the external device or deletion of the file itself, wherever it may be stored.

One additional thing I've run into is that using Outlook for your email and Word as your email editor can complicate this situation further. Even if you close Word after saving a document, a separate copy of Word may be running under Outlook and keeping something open on an external device. I've had to shut both Word and Outlook down in order to free a USB device for removal.

It is my understanding, also, that when you are writing to an external drive, such as a thumb drive, Windows doesn't completely write your data, as it's entered. I have forgotten what it's called, but the reason that Windows did this, was speed. It was faster to write everything to RAM & then write to a hard disc all at once.

In fact, if you have two external drives connected, Windows waits until it has sufficient data to write, & then writes to both drives. That is why you may see both drives flash when you write to one of them or when you go to eject one of them.

There is a solution if Windows has already written to the drives. This will happen when you try to eject it. If Windows is still preventing you from ejecting, you can download a small utility, called Unlocker. This little device has helped me many times. When you get a message: "Cannot delete xxx: It is being used by another person or program.", you right click on the file or drive & bring up a dialog box which let's you "unlock" the file or drive.

FYI. In Windows 10 (& possibly an earlier version, I'm not sure), Windows no longer waits to write to an external drive. The reason is that many people just detached a thumb drive & corrupted the data. The "time saved" by Windows writing only when necessary was outweighed by time spent recovering lost data.

Let me rephrase, because I have no way to edit my error in my previous comment. A fixed drive may have no disc. My system drive is a solid-state chip on my motherboard and my swap drive is a solid state SATA device. It isn't until my main data drive that I'm using disc technology.

It is often simplest to work with a document on your local fixed (internal) drive, copying it from or to your thumb drive. This leaves all the temporary files and internal handling issues where they cannot interfere with external media.

It is often simplest to work with a document on your local fixed disc drive, copying it from or to your thumb drive. This leaves all the temporary files and internal handling issues where they cannot interfere with external media.

Thanks for this enlightenment on flash drives and Word. It's an interesting fix to keep in mind now that I understand how Word works. Thanks to Mr. Burg also for his additional info.

I've run into the issue of WIndows thinking the flash drive is still in use - even if all programs that were using the drive have been closed (Word was closed, all flash-drive folders, etc. were closed but to no avail).

My understanding, having asked some IT people and from my own background, is that Windows may buffer data being written to a drive in memory (main memory or virtual memory) rather than writing it when you do a "write" operation to the disk. For example, when you save a file, Windows may not write the information to the disk immediately bcs write operations to an external drive are relatively slow. So to keep the CPU humming along at higher speeds, Windows (or other OS's) keep the data in memory until there is less to do. So if you try disconnecting the drive, Windows wants to warn you that it's not safe to do so because you might lose information not yet actually written to the drive and still sitting somewhere in memory.

However, there is a setting associated with a drive (including a thumb drive) that tells the OS whether to always write data to the drive as soon as the write operation is performed. For thumb drives, this setting is set to true. So in theory, disconnecting such a drive does not pose the problem of losing data.

In the case of Word, of course, disconnecting the drive after you've done the last save does leave Word's temporary files on the drive. Same for any other program that uses such files on the "active" drive (the one where the file is being written to). It's not that those files are corrupted since they were temporary and can just be deleted. Remembering to do so, of course, is another story and your thumb drive can get filled up with junk over time.

All of the above aside, I still go thru the "disconnect" drive process for my thumb drives and close down any relevant programs if Windows complains that the drive is still in use. It's the equivalent of safe sex.