As far as why to save to a hard drive rather than to a flash drive (or
any other removable media):
There are several hazards associated with editing documents that are
stored on removable media. The big one for flash drives is the
possibility that the drive could be unplugged or accidentally knocked
loose before the document is finally saved and all operations are
complete. If the document file isn't properly closed, it might be
unreadable when you try to open it again.
One thing that's very important in this regard is a hardware setting
in Windows. With the flash drive plugged in, right-click any drive
icon in Windows Explorer and select Properties. Click the Hardware
tab, select the flash drive, and click the Properties button. In the
next dialog, go to the Policies tab. Select the option "Optimize for
quick removal". That makes sure that all writes to the flash drive
happen immediately instead of being saved up for a convenient time.
That way, when Murphy's Law strikes, at least you won't have any
unwritten data sitting in memory.
Copying a closed file from the hard drive to the flash drive has no
such problems and is the recommended method for making quick backups.
Working with Word documents stored on other removable media has
additional problems. CD-RW and DVD-RW used like a big floppy can be
flaky, because most packet-writing software isn't as reliable as one
would hope. Zip disks and floppies are even worse because of their
limited space; Word uses lots of temporary files, many of them by
necessity in the folder from which the document was opened, so the
disk can fill up quickly. Finally, most removable media are *much*
slower than hard disks, so saving becomes tedious.
--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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newsgroup so all may benefit.
My Documents is just a folder on the C: drive. Its actual path may be
something like C:\Documents and Settings\<Profile Name>\My Documents. When
people tell you to save to the hard drive, they're not suggesting you avoid
My Documents, though most users do create subfolders of My Documents for
specific projects or applications.
john said:
Many thanx to both who responded [I was suspicious of the index] - I am now
curious about the suggestion of Cyber Taz regarding the preference of saving
to disc instead of to flash drive. I had figured that using the flash was
safer - it got it stuff completely as possible away from any possibility of
harm, and didn't add anything to the space used in the machine. So [1] what
is the problem here ? [2] I've saved to 'My Document' before,but I've never
saved directly to C; so I want to understand the process: Am I correct that
the path would be File>Save As>Save In>C ? [Incidentally, I defragged, and
that helped some] And again, many thanx [Delaware,USA]
:
Using XP, Word 2002, and having about 15GB of space left on the C drive:
I'm preparing a genealogy-type paper, and I have entered about 150 pages
[920KB] of text,- about 150 pp. of index [10 MB - 3 col.-surname, given
name, page #, gridlines showing]. I frequently use Ctrl+S, and every couple
of days, send the whole mess to E [flash drive]. And I still have to add
about 50 pp of text, and about 30 to index. And the machine is getting slow.
QUESTION: is my frequent use of Ctrl+S responsible for the increasing
slowness - what should I have done - what should I now do to get things
going a little better ? TIA
