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WD Elements Drive NOT Flash Drive!

The main issue is that the WD Elements drives need to be plugged into/out of the the USB Port only when the PC is powered off.  This is a major warning which in not included in the small pamphlet included with the drive.

The reason for this is Windows XP is caching (holding in memory without writting to the drive) directory and file information.  If the drive is unplugged abruptly, some information about the changes made are not actually on the drive.  (If anyone is mature enough to remember the old Unix systems, a power-fail would cause corrupted file systems.)

Flash drives can be plugged/unplugged from the system without  corruption.  Evidently, the system sees a different characteristic for the external drives.

Hopefully, this warning will be distributed through all possible paths.  Does WD have a Twitter account?

Can anyone supply information about the availability of the Scan Disk Utility on the Win8 systems, which can reconcile the Free Block Map with the blocks actually allocated in the existing files.  My new WD Elements drive is being used to transfer files between my XP system and my new Win8 system.

One difference between WD Elements and Flash is that WD is formatted with an NTFS file system and Flash drives use a FAT32 file system.  That may explain one caching information and the other not.

The Windows repair utility is Chkdsk which is available by Right Clicking the Drive, Properties, and then the Tool Tab.

Chkdsk found two ‘orphaned’ directories, which made all the lost files available.

The NTFS devices require using the ‘Safely Remove’ icon on the Taskbar before unnplugging.

A warning with this information, or a link to it, still needs to be promenently placed on the pamphlet included with the Drive.

This problem is propably fairly common, because for those used to using external drives, the Element series is a small external drive, for those who have been using Flashdrives, it is a large Flashdrive.

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