The Rowe Family of Chinnor

Jan, try this regarding Dad's USB flash drive....

"A note of caution when unplugging

When you've finished using your USB flash drive, it is generally recommended that you should first of all click on the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon that appears in the System Tray in the bottom right of your computer's Task Bar before then unplugging the drive. This makes sure that no programs are continuing to access the drive, and in particular, it makes sure that no programs are in the middle of writing some data to the drive when you unplug it.

With delayed caching functions, you might think you've finished with the USB drive even though the computer still has some pending tasks. If you unplug the drive while the computer is in the middle of updating a file, you'll probably end up with a corrupted file, and perhaps you might end up with an entire corrupted flash drive (due to the index file also being open or not correctly updated)."

Hope it is of some use. It means little to me using the Mac!

Pete