[Scott M.[_2_]]

"Peter T. Daniels" wrote in message
...
On Aug 26, 9:18 am, "Scott M." wrote:
And how does that get them from friend's computer to OP's computer?

Email? Remember we're talking about less than 1.44 MB of data.

No, we're talking about "a whole box" of diskettes. Now it might be a
10-diskette retail box, but I'm envisioning more something like a
shoebox.

And why wouldn't email be a way to transfer that?

2b. Because Word needs lots of space for creating the temporary files
it uses, and flash drives may not have adequate free space, and
corruption or loss of the file is a frequent result.

2C: You'll have a tough time finding a flash drive sold today that is
less
than 2GB -- more than enough space for Word docs that were stored on a
1.44
MB floppy. Corruption is only frequent if you pull the flash card from
the
USB slot while data is still being read/written. With most modern flash
drives, you don't even have to go through the Windows XP "Saftely remove
hardware" procedure.

2C-A - Why are we talking about flash drives again?

"Again"?

"Again" as in "remind me" since this was not brought up in the OP at all.

Because when Graham answered OP's question, he recommended
transferring the files from the friend's computer to the OP's computer
by flash drive, and then you questioned why a flash drive would be
needed given that one of the computers involved in the process had a
diskette drive.

Because many people read this newsgroup and, from the number of
complaints about corrupted files that were saved directly to or opened
directly from flash drives, it's a major problem that needs to be
pointed out probably several times a day.

There is no evidence that flash memory is any more volitile than HDD
memory.

No one has mentioned volatility of memory. What _seems_ to be the
problem is that Word needs to create lots and lots of temporary files
in the same folder as the original document, and if the flash drive
runs out of space, you're screwed.

Word creates one (1) temporary file per document that is open. If one
document is open (and why would you need more than one open at a time to
transfer them?), then the file created is no larger than the original
document in the first place. If you have a flash drive that can't support
one additional file placed on it, then you probably shouldn't be using that
flash drive in the first place. Also, given then my local Best Buy doesn't
even sell a flash drive less than 4 GB anymore, you'd easily be able to
store 2000 floppy disks worth of information on it.

The fact that many people encounter corruption with flash drives is not an
indicator that there is a problem with flash drives per se. It is more
likely that the people reporting problems are not using them properly
(pulling the drive while it's still being read from/written to). In a NG,
you'll most likely hear from the folks that don't know how to do something
correctly. Rather than make a statement like "DON'T access then from the
flash memory", which has no basis for being a technicological problem,
Graham should have said something like "If you use a flash drive to
transfer
the files, be careful to only pull the drive out after you've successfully
completed the save operation to the drive.". But, to somehow imply that
documents on flash drives shouldn't be opened directly is absurd.

You clearly haven't been reading this newsgroup very long,

Why? Because I disagree with an MVP's suggestion? Again, I have no doubt
that many people here have encountered file corruption with flash drives.
But that, in and of itself, does not mean that the flash drive itself is the
problem. Newsgroups are where people (usually inexperienced or uninformed)
go to get help.

and if you're in the habit of saving or reading documents directly from Word
to/from flash drives, instead of always accessing them from a hard
drive, and you've had no ill experiences, then you've been very lucky.

No, I've been educated and informed enough about the technology to know how
to use it correctly. You cannot provide ANY technical evidence that using a
flash drive correctly is any more prone to file corruption than HDD media.

-Scott