Applies to: Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP
Flash Drive, Pen Drive or “Flash Memory USB Pen Drive Stick Drives Sticks Disks”. Many names, but they are all the same thing…
This video shows you how to copy files. That’s useful either as a backup in case something happens to your PC, or as a handy way to take the files to a different computer.
Click on the play button in the middle to start it. If you want it to fill the screen, click in the bottom right hand corner of the video once it’s playing or just double click anywhere on the video. If you’re having trouble getting it to play, you can watch it here instead.
STOP PRESS NOTE: I’ve just found out that with some flash drives, you can only have 255 files directly on the flash drive – after that it won’t let you add more. Don’t worry if that happens to you. Just right click on it and select create a new folder, then put the extra files into the new folder. That gets around the problem.
January 15, 2017 at 9:23 pm
Hi Tim,
I want to copy an iTunes playlist onto a flash drive. Where do I click on to move this please? Do I click on the music file or can I just click on the playlist? Can I also select random songs from my ITunes music to copy over to a flash drive?
January 16, 2017 at 3:05 pm
Hello, I can’t check if this works as I don’t have iTunes here… but this website says you can do it by doing this
To copy songs from iTunes to a USB: Insert the flash drive into a USB port, and open it so it looks like a folder on your desktop.
Then highlight the songs in your iTunes library that you want, as follows:
To highlight one song, click it.
To highlight a range of songs, click the first, hold Shift, and click the last.
To highlight a bunch of selected songs that are not in order, hold the CTRL key and click each one.
To highlight all the songs in the view, click one, and then CTRL-A.
Once they are highlighted, simply drag them to the folder.
If you normally run iTunes in full-screen mode, make it smaller before you start this process, so that you will be able to do the drag.
One thing I meant to add: this process copies the songs to the USB. It does not change anything in your iTunes library.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3631435?tstart=0
Have a try and let me know how you get on, if it’s not working just let me know and we can try something else.
Thanks
Mike 🙂
December 29, 2016 at 12:13 pm
As I now have W10, I would like to instal FastStone, how do I do this ? and do I instal it before I attempt to move my pics from Picasa onto FastStone ? And how do I change them from Picasa to FastStone ?
January 3, 2017 at 11:13 am
Hi Robert
Your photos are stored on your hard disk which can be read from any program (not inside Picasa) so you can safely have both programs installed at once. You can get the latest version of FastStone from here http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm just click the “download” button on that page and follow the installation instructions (once you have downloaded it, run the file it downloaded).
When you fist open FastStone it should scan your hard disk and find all your photos.
Let me know how you get on
Mike 🙂
December 29, 2016 at 12:02 pm
How do I know when the flash drive is full ?
January 3, 2017 at 11:10 am
Good question, in general it won’t let you copy any more stuff to it and it will say “out of disk space” or similar.
The other way to check is to plug it in, open up File Explorer and right click on the Flash Drive, click “Properties” on here and Windows will show you a pie chart with disk space left (this works on other drives too like the C: drive).
Let me know if you need a little more info
Many thanks
Mike 🙂
November 29, 2016 at 1:03 pm
I have a lot of pictures in Picassa. I understand Google is not going to support this now.
Are these pictures on my computer, or are they stored by Picassa some where else? Have you any imstructions for Picassa, please, to help. I have these On one of my computers using Windows 7, and find it good for editing. Now I have a new laptop, (which I am finding very difficult to get used to – everything dashes round, and often disappears before I press “send” resulting in many empty emails arriving without content!!) Should I install Picassa on this computer- which is, incidentally, using Windows 10.
Sorry to give you two queries at once, and do hope you can give me some help.
Thank-you. annette
November 30, 2016 at 10:01 am
Hi Annette
Picasa
The photos are stored on your hard disk (not in Picasa). If you right click on a photo in Picasa and click on “Find on Disk” This opens File Explorer and shows you where they are saved.
Make sure you transfer all your photos from your old computer to your new one, I would use a flash drive for this and we have a video on how to transfer files here:
https://www.pcinnercircle.co.uk/index.php/2016/06/how-to-copy-files-to-a-flash-drive/
We would not recommend installing Picasa as it is no longer supported. I have looked high and low for an alternative to it and have not found one I like. I use Paint.Net and Tim likes FastStone, you can find links to both of these on this page https://www.pcinnercircle.co.uk/index.php/program-downloads/
If you need a hand with this let me know and I will do my best to help.
New Laptop
Are you using a mouse with your new laptop or using the touchpad? I find touchpads the worst thing about laptops as they are easy to mash while typing, not accurate when trying to move files around.
I use a mouse plugged into mine (along with a keyboard) which you can see a picture of at the bottom of this post: https://www.pcinnercircle.co.uk/index.php/2016/04/hello-from-mike/
Give a mouse a try and see if that makes your laptop a bit easier to use.
If you already use a mouse then we can look at turning down the sensitivity of it so everything just moves a little slower.
Hope this helps
Mike