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USB flash drives and their removal

SteevLSteevL What can I do for you?Registered User regular
edited June 2008 in Help / Advice Forum
I work in a public library with a ton of internet PCs. Many of the standard functions of these PCs have been disabled by our IT staff to prevent people from messing them up, intentionally or unintentionally. This creates a few interesting problems and issues, but I can usually work around them. One thing I want to be extra careful about, though, are people's USB flash drives.

One of the things people cannot do when using a USB flash drive is right click on the "safely remove hardware" icon. I think it says something about needing the administrator's account in order to do it. This usually isn't a problem because most people don't even know about doing that sort of thing, but the ones who do are always concerned that they'll lose their stuff if they don't right click-->safely remove hardware. I'll usually turn the PC off completely for them just so they don't freak out.

But really, how necessary is the "safely remove hardware" feature? Common sense tells me that you'd only run the risk of losing data if you're in the middle of writing to the flash drive when you pull it out of the USB port. Am I correct in this assumption? Turning the PC off works ok, I guess, but it takes forever for it to reconnect to the library's network, and I'd be far happier with explaining to people that you don't have to worry that much about using "safely remove hardware".

SteevL on

Posts

  • WillethWilleth Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    You are correct in that assumption.

    But if you are so worried about people messing them up, why do you even allow USB access?

    Willeth on
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  • SteevLSteevL What can I do for you? Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Well, I don't run the building, I just work here. :) Our IT staff are the ones who enabled USB access, and I'm assuming they decided it would be safe. The hard part can be convincing the very concerned patrons who can't remove their USB drives like they're used to that it's OK. I just wanted to make sure that they had nothing to worry about.

    We have about 30 public PCs, and only 3 of them have floppy and DVD drives. All the rest only have USB ports. If we didn't have those, people would be extremely pissed off that they couldn't save their work.

    SteevL on
  • WillethWilleth Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Can you not talk to IT? It might be that they can disable admin access for that specific thing.

    Also, I have no idea if this will work, but if you hold-left-click on the icon it'll give you a context box with all connected stuff, which you can then click to eject. Might bypass it, might just throw up an admin check again.

    Willeth on
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  • ImprovoloneImprovolone Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Convince people that if you hold down ctrl+alt and remove the stick, it will be fine

    Improvolone on
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  • Monolithic_DomeMonolithic_Dome Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Maybe write a script/program to unmount all USB mass storage devices and put a shortcut on the desktop? I don't know how you'd do this in windows, but I assume that it's possible.

    Monolithic_Dome on
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  • SteevLSteevL What can I do for you? Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Willeth wrote: »
    Can you not talk to IT? It might be that they can disable admin access for that specific thing.

    Also, I have no idea if this will work, but if you hold-left-click on the icon it'll give you a context box with all connected stuff, which you can then click to eject. Might bypass it, might just throw up an admin check again.

    Hey, that actually worked! Awesome. I never knew you could do that.

    I'm going to type up a quick instructional fact sheet for my co-workers. Thanks everyone! Problem solved.

    SteevL on
  • WillethWilleth Registered User regular
    edited June 2008
    Haha, awesome. You can also do that to bring up a context menu for most taskbar icons.

    Willeth on
    @vgreminders - Don't miss out on timed events in gaming!
    @gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
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