[WEB4LIB] USB Flash Drives

[Leo Robert Klein]

Working to allow Flash Drives is great.  Hopefully you can do in with
Fortress.  If not, it's really an example of software that needs to catch
up!

If you just yank them out, it used to be that you'd get a warning that
this made the system unstable.

In any case, from what I've seen of the growing popularity of these
devices, I'd say allowing people to use them ought to be high on
everyone's chore list.  They're close to becoming the new floppy.

LEO

-- -------------
Leo Robert Klein
www.leoklein.com


On Fri, February 4, 2005 10:23 am, Tom Gardner said:
> Hello.
>
> I did some quick research on this issue and could not find anything that
> directly related to it; so I figured I'd ask in these forums. Any
> insights you can offer would be appreciated. (Please excuse the
> cross-posting.)
>
> Currently, at our library, we do not allow patrons to use Flash drives
> on our public PCs because we have Fortres on all public PCs and Fortres
> is set to disallow access to the taskbar. Of course, to stop the USB
> device, you have to be able to access the little icon that appears on
> the taskbar. With Fortres, access to the taskbar is, as far as we can
> figure, an all-or-nothing proposition: we'd like to be able to allow
> patrons access to the "Stop USB Device" icon if doing so didn't give
> them access to everything else you can get to from the taskbar - which
> is virtually everything.
>
> My question: USB devices are supposedly hot-swappable, so taking them
> out without stopping them first should pose no risk to the PC. Assuming
> the patron has saved the document she is accessing on the USB device,
> and has closed the associated application, there *should*, as well, be
> no risk to the data or USB device itself when you remove it without
> stopping it first.
>