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How Do I Use A Flash Drive?

xvigauge

xvigauge

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 26, 2016
47
6
Mulberry, Florida
I have a new MacBook Pro. Of course I am learning new things about it everyday. I want to be able to save documents from the MS Word program that I installed to a flash drive. I bought a SanDisk flash drive. I plugged it in and a small screen came up to scan the "new device." So, I scanned it and the screen said it was ok. So how do I save the documents to it? I went to the "Finder" and it showed the flash drive was plugged in and it showed how to remove it, but how do I save stuff?
xvigauge
 
In MS Word you just go to "File" then in that menu select "Save As", under where select your flash drive in the dropdown menu.

If you have documents that you want transferred you can just drag them into your flash drive.
 
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That is the way it is supposed to work, but when I go to "file" then "save as" the flash drive is not in the menu for me to select.
xvigauge
 
xvigauge said:
That is the way it is supposed to work, but when I go to "file" then "save as" the flash drive is not in the menu for me to select.
xvigauge
Click to expand...
Has the flash drive been formatted to work with OS X?
 
xvigauge said:
I don't know. How do I format it?
xvigauge
Click to expand...
Top right of the screen click the magnifying glass and search for disk utility. Launch that and you should see your external drive. It's self explanatory from there
 
Gav2k said:
Top right of the screen click the magnifying glass and search for disk utility. Launch that and you should see your external drive. It's self explanatory from there
Click to expand...

OK, I did all of that, but nothing happened. I did not see a way to "launch" it. It was as though the flash drive was already formatted in that it was recognized as being installed. It is still not showing up in the "save as" drop down.
xvigauge
 
xvigauge said:
I don't know. How do I format it?
xvigauge
Click to expand...
I don't think that is the issue. If you can see it on the left side of Finder, then is is formatted and visible to the OS.

I don't have Word, so this may look a little different. When you click save, do you get something like this? Click where I have marked with the red arrow and it should expand to show a column on the left that looks sort of like Finder. Under Devices in the column you should see your USB key to select and save to.

You can see what I am talking about here.

Screen_Shot_2016-12-31_at_11_39_48_AM.png
 
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Thanks for all of the suggestions everyone, and no malice intended, but none of them worked. I figured it out for myself, but a little background info first. When I first got my MacBook a few weeks ago, I wanted to install my HP printer. I talked to experts at HP and at Apple and all of them told me to just plug it in and hook it up and it should work. Well it didn't. I went to the HP site on my own and found that I had to install some installation software from the site. The experts I talked to either did not know that or did not tell me. I installed the software and it worked. I was printing in just a few minutes.

I thought maybe that the SansDisk flash drive worked in a similar manner. It did. When the flash drive was plugged into the MacBook an icon appeared on the desk top. I clicked there and two more icons appeared. One was a users manual and the other was installation instructions. I clicked on the installation instructions and the SansDisk website appeared. I clicked on "down load the flash drive" or something like that and a couple more windows popped up. One was an "I accept" page and the other was a place for me to type in my password. I used the same password I use to open the computer and bingo, the flash drive was installed and when I went to "save" there was a place to save my document to the flash drive. Now, when the flash drive is plugged in, and icon for any document saved pops up and I can go right to the document and add any info I want.

So now everyone should know that all flash drives are not created equal and some require installation software.
xvigauge
 
Yes, there is more than one way to skin a cat. I format all new drives when I purchase them and never install the software that comes with them. Less headaches later on. Also, if you are saving documents to an external storage, make sure it is included in your TimeMachine backups or whatever your backup routine is.
 
Zazoh said:
Yes, there is more than one way to skin a cat. I format all new drives when I purchase them and never install the software that comes with them. Less headaches later on. Also, if you are saving documents to an external storage, make sure it is included in your TimeMachine backups or whatever your backup routine is.
Click to expand...


I understand what you are saying, but, this new SanDisk flash drive did not need to be formatted and no software came with it. I did, however have to install software from the SanDisk website in order to install it and make it work.
xvigauge
 
Glad you got your drive going, but you didn't really need to install the software that SanDisk provided.
And, it did come with software on the drive (you downloaded it by running the link that you found on the drive) but that's just a minor quibble.
It probably worked because the software that you installed allows you to read and write to an NTFS format drive.
Larger flash drives might be formatted NTFS.
macOS won't write to NTFS drives without driver software installed, but formatting to Mac format makes them perfectly usable without that software added to your system.

And, now you know that there's more than one way to skin a cat (thanks, Zazoh!)
 
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DeltaMac said:
Glad you got your drive going, but you didn't really need to install the software that SanDisk provided.
And, it did come with software on the drive (you downloaded it by running the link that you found on the drive) but that's just a minor quibble.
It probably worked because the software that you installed allows you to read and write to an NTFS format drive.
Larger flash drives might be formatted NTFS.
macOS won't write to NTFS drives without driver software installed, but formatting to Mac format makes them perfectly usable without that software added to your system.

And, now you know that there's more than one way to skin a cat (thanks, Zazoh!)
Click to expand...

I don't understand what you mean by, "...but you didn't really need to install the software the that SanDisk provided." If I didn't need it, then what could i have done? I tried everything that everyone on the forum told me to do. Nothing worked until I downloaded the software provided by the SanDisk website. It looked to me like there was only one way to skin a cat. This one is a large storage flash drive. It was suggested on an earlier post that I get a large storage one. BTW, I don't know what "NTFS" means. I also tried formatting the flash drive and followed the instructions given on this thread, but some of the things they told me to click on were just not there, so I could not format it, at least not in the way I was instructed and I could find no other way anyway. So, if I could have formatted the flash drive then as you say I would not have had to have "added the software to my system," but what else could I do when there was no way to format the flash drive.
xvigauge
 
Last edited:
Woah...
Sorry you missed the simple way.
But, you did get it to work, and that's the important thing...
NTFS (NT File System) is a Windows-native format. You can read files on an NTFS format drive, but can't modify or copy files TO and NTFS volume from a Mac, unless you install special drivers that allow you to do that. That was the software that you installed. It means that you didn't need to do anything to the flash drive, and no change in format, just the software to be able to use it as is.
Problem is that NTFS drivers (especially the free ones) can be pretty inefficient, meaning that the drive performance may not be as fast as you might like. That's when the macOS format would come in handy.
Perhaps you will never notice.
Yeah, you'll be fine...
 
Thanks DeltaMac. I appreciate your interest and help. I think I understand what is going on now. Like you say, I will never notice any difference as I don't see any anyway. As far as the efficiency of the drive performance, it is, I believe as fast as it can be. It sure is not slow. Click on the drive and the file is loaded onto instantly. Thanks for your help. This is definitely the place to go for Mac info.
xvigauge
 
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