If you yank out a USB drive from your computer, do you think it hurts the stick or could damage the drive?  No it doesn’t.  Well, it’s possible, but not probable.  The reason why is that Windows updated their removal policy for mass storage devices a long time ago.

To mitigate the likelihood of data loss in surprise removal scenarios, Windows XP refined the caching policy for removable storage. As of Windows XP Beta 2, for consumer-oriented removable storage (USB, Flash, Zip, and so on), write caching is disabled by default.

This means the write process happens immediately and when the Windows dialogue box shows complete…it’s really complete.

In the past, Windows would buffer the data first, then write.  So if you pulled out the storage device there was a good chance Windows was still writing to the drive.  That’s when you get a corrupted drive.  So Window’s changed

If you are like me, you’ve done a great bit of searching on the internet to remove Read Only USB partition or to remove CDROM USB partition, and unfortunately there isn’t much information out there.  The only utility we’ve found, is the one used to remove the U3 platform off a retail USB stick made by Sandisk, but chances are you are dealing with a different vendor or stick.

We found a company that can do this, and they do it in bulk.  USBCopier.com is a USB duplication service company that specializes in fixing your problem, like removing a Read Only USB partition.  I’m not sure how they do it, but their services worked for us.

As you know, a simple format or delete attempt to the USB device simply doesn’t work…you get the “This disk is write protected” message.

I spoke with USBCopier.com about the issue, and they can remove a USB partition off all types of drives, like USB sticks with Chipsbank controllers, Alcor, SMI, USBest and many others.  They also said the partition type doesn’t matter, it can be either the Read Only or CDROM and they can remove it.  USBCopier also mentioned if they can remove the USB partition, then chances are, they can also recreate it.

The company was a life saver to us and I wanted to pass along the information.  It was much cheaper to pay the service fee to remove the USB partition than it was to re-buy all the USB sticks and start from scratch.

Here is the link to their USB duplication service page.  Here is the link to their contact page.

If you are in a bit of trouble – I wish you luck – these guys could possibly help.

If, GetUSB.info had an award for best Steampunk drive, this would get it.  Set in a nice wood case, this Steampunk USB drive is riddled with over 30 mechanical parts from six different watches.  Some parts are from watches that are over 100 years old.

The 16GB hand crafted USB Steampunk also holds 26 Ruby gems which catch the light from different angles.  When the stick is plugged in the standard green LED illuminates and also creates a nice look.  Unfortunately no picture of it connected.

This prize winning Steampunk took nearly 12 hours to complete…and looks fantastic.  What do you think?

Palm Pre owners might find a small window of opportunity to sync their device with iTunes for easy music browsing, listening and downloading.  In short, someone figured out how to have the Palm Pre appear as an iPod to iTunes by chancing the VendorID of the Palm.  Meaning – iTunes thinks its an iPod, but it really isn’t.

I seriously doubt this was something done by Palm, but rather a hacker out there doing what hackers do.

First you have Palm claiming it’s a USB compliant device for a different vendor, I don’t think that will fly.  Second, you have Palm tricking iTunes thinking it’s an iPod – Apple wont be too happy about that. Third, it shows

Today I was doing some research for a good solar powered iPhone charger.  I went the direction of a DIY [Do It Yourself] project then realized this is all a waste of time.  Maybe there are a select few that would jump on a DIY solar powered iPhone charger project, but considering the complexity of the tutorials I found, very very unlikely my average reader would actually do it.

So to save yourself the 30+ minutes of looking for a good tutorial, just spend 3 minutes and buy one that will A) work better, B) look better and C) be cheaper.

The project directions can be found here and you’ll quickly see it’s a complex project that requires some tools you might not have, plus supplies you’ll surely need to buy.  All in all, it’s about a $70 project,

Read an interesting article on social media and how it can impact your business, blog, or audience through social media websites like FaceBook and Twitter.  Granted, these terms are nothing new, and today we announce the addition of another network for GetUSB, Twitter.

The article which inspired me to sign up was from Chris Brogan and if you are looking for 50 reasons, or just one, on why to get onto Twitter – give it a read.

So now you can receive the GetUSB article title each day on Twitter, and if the topic tickles your fancy, click through and read the rest.  There is plenty of good content we churn out day after day, so please follow us.

Thanks & Cheers,
Gmo
Editor in Chief GetUSB.info

The world is going Green.  This is your chance to keep those USB gadgets, yet charge them without consuming electricity and leaving your carbon footprint.  The idea behind this USB tutorial is taking the kinetic energy of your bike and turn that into re-powering any USB gadget.

I found this fun little project off the Instructables website.  Apparently the author received some grant funds from Lemelson-MIT program and put together a team of 6 students to create this solution.

The team got their idea from shake-up flashlights which are based off the Faraday Principle – which is a type of electromagnetism reaction to generate energy.

You will need to get a bread-board and create a small circuit to capture the energy produced by the bike and turn it towards your USB gadget.

Next, you’ll need a motor provider that will actually “capture” the energy, feed it through your newly made circuit.  There are many options for this, check