Work on computer NOT on USB Drive

This tip comes to you from Chris Betcher in Australia.

When you want to carry work between school and home, a USB drive is a great thing to use. They hold lots of data, are small, light and portable, and are generally pretty reliable. However, don’t save directly to them… they are only designed to be a means of transporting your files. When you work on a file at home, make sure you save your work on your hard drive, not your memory stick. The Desktop or the My Documents folder are good places to use. Save regularly as you work!

When you finish working on the file, THEN you can drag it from the Desktop or the My Documents folder to the USB Drive… in other words, you carry the entire finished file across to the USB, you don’t save directly to it.

When you get to school, drag the file from the USB to the Desktop or your Documents Folder, and then open it from there. When you’re finished working on it, drag it back to the USB to take the updated version back home again.

Used this way, the USB drive is being used simply to transport your files back and forth and will be much more reliable.

OK, I think I understand, but please SHOW ME.

Ejecting USB drive

One of the easiest ways to carry work back and forth from school to home to school is with a USB drive. The are in variously called 'flash drives', 'thumb drives', 'memory sticks'. The name does not matter. How you use them does.

Both at home an at school be sure to EJECT the device before removing it from the computer. This dismounts the drive. Unless you do this you may find files corrupting.

At school on the Macintosh computers this is done by dragging the icon of the drive to the trash can [which changes to an eject arrow as you drag], or by clicking the eject button in the sidebar of any open folder.

OK, I think I understand, but please SHOW ME.