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April 23, 2006
Windows Hell - Norton vs. USB Drives
Perhaps you have run into the following problem with your Windows PC. You have a USB drive with a fairly high capacity, and when you decide you want to eject it, you give the order to the little Safely Remove Hardware icon, but Windows tells you that the drive cannot be stopped right now and you should try again later. If you try yanking the drive without doing the Safe Remove, you get a delayed write failure. Yet you are not running any applications, and you know you're not using that drive for anything any more.
The culprit in this case is a feature of Norton Utilities called Norton File Protection. If you're using Norton File Protection, your recycle bin will be called Norton Protected Recycle Bin, and there will probably be a little shield with an N on it attached to the icon. Norton File Protection keeps track of deleted files, even after they've been cleared from the recycle bin. This makes it easier to recover lost data, but it comes at a price. Once the Norton Protection kicks in for a drive, it opens a control file on the drive and keeps it open, preventing you from ejecting the drive. Worse, even if the drive is configured for Quick Removal, Norton Protection activates delayed writing. This makes the performance hit from Norton Protection minimal, but it also means your drive's directory could get seriously mangled due to a delayed write failure.
So, your best bet is to turn off Norton File Protection. It means you'll lose some recoverability, but it makes your removable drives behave in a much more stable fashion, and that's nothing to sneeze at.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
# At Sun 10:07 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (0) | More Windows Hell
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