Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Using a Memory Stick

    A memory stick has many names.  They are: thumb drive, jump drive, flash drive, Cruzer, Sans Disk, or a techy-thinga-ma-bobber.

    A memory stick is a useful device that we can use to back up our files or move our files from computer to another.

  Memory sticks have different sizes.  Here is how to find the size of your memory stick.  The easiest way is to look on the stick .  Most sticks will tell on the labeling.  Here is the next way.

  1. Put the memory stick in the computer.  It will only fit one way.  The USB slot is usually in the front of the computer.  If it doesn't fit, flip it over and try the other way.  The slot for the memory stick looks like this:

  2. Click Start.

  3. Click My Computer.

  4. Right Click on the memory stick. 

  5. Click Properties. 

  6. Here is the information I need. 

When you look at the My Computer Screen we need to figure a couple of things out.

(C:) is the main computer drive.

(E:) is the memory stick drive.

We need to keep these two letters in mind.  PLEASE REMEMBER that your letters for the memory stick could be different than mine.

Moving files from your computer to your memory stick.

  1. Locate your files on your computer.

  2. Locating your files is usually done by click Start.

  3. Click My Documents. 

  4. Here is the file I found. 

  5. To move the file to the memory stick right click the file.

  6. Click Send To. 

  7. Click USB (E:). 

  8. When we movie a file to the memory stick it actually makes a copy to the memory stick.

Now we need to confirm that the file made it to the memory stick.

  1. Click Start.

  2. Click My Computer.

  3. Double Click USB Disk E. 

  4. Check to make sure it is there. 

Just a tiny bit about bytes.

1 megabyte - is something like a 1000 page document.
3 megabytes would be about the size of one high quality picture.
4 megabytes is about the size of a song.
1000 megabytes equals a gigabyte.
A DVD movie is something 5 gigabytes.
1000 gigabytes equals a terrabyte

Here is the more complicated way to move files from your computer to a memory stick.

  1. Click Start.

  2. Click My Computer.

  3. Double click the memory stick. 

  4. Click the restore down button.  It is the one in the middle.    A word of caution.  If your screen is not maximized you will not see the restore down option.  It will turn into a Maximize button.  If you see a maximize button you can skip this step.    This is all so confusing please go and get a very nice and cold Beer straight from the Roots.

  5. Click on the title bar and move it to the right. 

  6. You now need to shrink the size of the window.  Go down to the corner until your mouse turns into two arrows pointing in opposite directions.

  7. When you have the two arrows you can click and drag your folder smaller.  Your goal is for the window to take up half the screen. 

  8. Now, back to clicking Start.

  9. Click My Documents.

  10. You need to resize the My Documents folder so it takes up the left side of the screen.

  11. Now we can simply drag from one folder to the other.