Connecting and using a USB flash (or pen drive) drive with your PC or laptop is simple and easy provided you do everything correctly right from the beginning to the end. Otherwise, there are chances that the files are not transferred between the usb drive and your PC or even the files can become corrupted.

 

Please make sure that you do the following things before you try to access the flash drive by connecting it with your computer:

 

 

Nowadays, all PCs and laptops come with multiple USB ports (or host controller) which are found on the side or front of the cabinet housing the CPU. It is not difficult to spot out them as you can find USB symbol near it. As per your convenience, you can insert the flash drive on the port available on the front or the side of your lap top / PC.

 

A few PCs will have USB ports on the rear side. Sometimes you may like to plug multiple USB devices but you do not have enough ports for it. If so, you can connect a USB hub with multiple ports directly into the USB port on your PC.

 

 

As soon as you insert the flash drive into the port, your monitor will display a window that a new hardware has been detected. If you are using Windows XP, your PC will already support the flash drive and will immediately assign a letter to identify the pen drive and will display the contents that are stored in flash drive.

 

If your monitor shows nothing, may be using, windows version prior to Windows XP. Then, click on ‘My computer’ icon which will include flash drive among the other drives, but under ‘Removable storage’. Depending on the partition of hard disk and the devices like CDROM and floppy drive, the letter used to display the flash drive may vary.

 

 

You can access flash drive by clicking on ‘My computer’ and by double-clicking on the icon or letter that signifies the flash drive. This will show the contents on the flash drive. Again, double click on a specific file to read it.

 

You can also transfer the files between flash drive and hard disk. Right click on the specific file and choose ‘copy’. Then choose the location on your hard drive where you like to transfer the contents to and click on ‘paste’.

 

 

Select the files that you want to copy from hard disk on your flash drive. If they are in a single folder, right click after choosing the files you want to copy. Then, move the cursor over ‘send to’ and select ‘removable disk’. Your files will be copied on the flash drive immediately.

If you want to save files in different folders on your flash pen drive, create folders in your flash drive and save the files in the folders.

 

If you are using Windows XP or later version of Windows, your taskbar will show the pen drive icon. Once you have completed the work of transferring data between the pen drive and your PC, you need to disable this icon before pulling the flash drive from the USB port. For safe disconnection, you need to click on this icon. A message window will ask you to select the hardware device you want to remove safely. Then, select USB storage device and click on ‘OK’ to finish.

 

Then, you can take the USB pen drive from the port safely.