I could give a similar anecdote about losing a bunch of important photos a
few years back when my hard drive failed. It doesn't mean we stop working
with hard drives.
This thread has really gotten away from my simple initial point, which is to
say "don't access a file from a flash drive" without any explanantion of why
or what *could* happen is irresponsible. And, believe it or not, I'm not
advocating the practice. What I'm saying is that, in and of itself, the
practice is not dangerous and that Graham's comments were incomplete as well
as his later explanation innacurate. As with ALL computer files, having a
backup copy is the best bet 100% of the time.
I just find it troubling that more and more in the NG's I'm hearing MVP's
doling out, what sounds like absolute edicts without any explanation, which
leaves a newbie (the vast majority of NG readers) believing what they are
hearing without understanding what they've been told.
Graham hasn't helped his cause with irrational statements like saying the
software will not help you open a password protected Word document, only
time will (almost verbaitim what he said). Using that logic, you could say
that nothing in the universe happens, but for the passage of time
(extostential for sure, but practical and true for day to day living - -
hardly true at all).
-Scott
"Beth Melton" wrote in message
...
"Scott M." wrote in message
...
There is no evidence that flash memory is any more volitile than HDD
memory. 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.
I used to feel this way as well but that was before I lost an important
document after editing it directly on a flash drive. I know how to safely
remove a flash drive and I also exited Word prior to ejecting it. I even
had the Word option for "Copy remotely stored files onto your computer,
and update the remote file when saving" enabled. My personal experience is
enough evidence for me to now advise others to copy files to their local
drive and after exiting Word to copy them back to their flash drive. Even
though it may sound absurd I don't want to be the one to advocate working
directly off a flash drive and have someone lose an important document
because of my advice. FWIW, the only reason I was working on documents
directly off a flash drive was to prove this advice wrong. LOL
Also note if someone removes their flash drive after saving you risk
corruption due to how Word manages temp files. When you save a file that
doesn't mean all of the content in the Word document is finalized. Some
finalization occurs when you close the file and Word may also perform some
clean-up activities when you exit the application. This includes clean-up
on the flash drive since Word saves some temp files in the same location
as the saved document and depending on what was done while the document
was open, such copying images and multiple sections in the document, temp
files and links to the document are maintained. For more on how Word uses
temp files take a look at this article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/211632
~Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP