Let’s say I want to copy files over and over again to many different flash drives. May or not be the same files, doesn’t really matter.
However, the time to load and mount the flash drive and then unmount eats up way too much time.
Is there a way to have the driver permanently loaded (not sure if this is the right way to say this or the right approach) so that you can just plug/unplug drives one after another.
They can all be the exact same type/size drive if that helps. Ideally, the driver would light up an LED when writing so you know when you can remove it without compromising the data.
The drivers already do stay loaded. When I unplug a flash drive, and later plug it back in, the drivers don’t reload. A message simply pops up saying I inserted a USB device.
ETA–sometimes even the message doesn’t pop up, it simply works.
The reason for unmounting is to try and prevent an instance of the data being partially written when you pull out. Unmounting will flush the buffers and write everything to “disk”.
When I’m lazy I just pull the USB. I have never ruined one. Not once.
This is not to imply that you can’t ruin one just by yanking it out, but if you are careful and make sure that everything has been written, you should be OK.
If you do have trouble with one, see if you are able to format it. That should get it back.
Not sure how many “many” is, but if it’s 8 or so, you could get a cheap powered USB hub, and plug them all in at once. I’ve had 4 USB flash drives on my hub at once with no problem, they show up as F,G,H, & I.
Windows 7 has a setting if you right click on the drive and select properties then select properties again under the hardware tab and finally go to the policies tab. It will let you set write caching on or off. I think it defaults to off, so unless you pull the drive in the middle of a write operation it should be fine.
I don’t think there is any way to accomplish what the OP wants. Even if it is the same model drive and uses the same driver you still have to dismount the first drive and mount the second, otherwise windows is going to think it is still writing to the same drive, which has all sorts of unwanted potential side effects.
If this is something that you will be doing a lot of, it might be wise to invest in a flash copier. I think you can get them for 600 or so. More if you want to copy more at a time.
Or, depending on your goals, you could buy them preloaded.
This has been my experience as well. Even if I pull out the usb card reader that has the flash card inserted, as soon as I plug it back in the flash drive is recognized immediately.
I think this situation is analogous since a usb drive is nothing more than a flash drive mounted on a usb interface.
Note: This is with Windows 7. If you are using a different OS, it would be useful to know which one.