USB Memory Sticks –
Ask Before Pulling Them Out of the Computer
Do you use one of those handy USB Memory Sticks? I use them all the time. I just pop it into the USB port, copy the data I need and then pop it out. It’s great for backing up, or moving files to a computer off the network.
It turns out, when you remove a USB memory stick from your computer you should always use the “Safely Remove Hardware” function located on your computers’ Task Bar. Why? Because by removing hardware when the system is not ready for it to be removed, can cause all kinds of internal problems. Especially with database connections! And some of them may affect you.
Recently, we had a very strange bug were some customers lost their reports database. It turned out this was caused by saving a report to the memory stick and then removing the memory stick before they closed the report window and quit ClickFORMS. By pulling the memory stick out, internal database connections were disrupted, causing erroneous data be generated and after a series of missteps, ClickFORMS thought it was dealing with a corrupt database and replaced it with a new, all be it empty one.
The moral of the story is before you pull out that USB Memory Stick, make sure all your connections to it are closed and when in doubt, use the “Safely Remove Hardware” function. The operating system knows when it’s safe to remove hardware. |
