That was easy!

Gently remove your flash drives, recover your deleted photos, and regain control of your Facebook email notifications.

It’s easy when you know how.

Safely remove drives

You really should not be yanking those USB drives out when you’re through with them. They want to be safely removed.

Why?

Because safely removing the drives minimizes the chances of damaging files and the drives themselves. You don’t want to remove the drive when Windows is trying to read or write a file on it.

When you are finished working with the drive:

• Close any programs that might be running on it, close any programs that might be reading a file on the drive, and close File Explorer.
• Click on the upward facing arrow in the Notification Area
• Click on the Safely Remove… icon (Looks like a tiny flash drive)
• Click on Eject… for the drive you want to remove
• WAIT for the confirmation message before you remove your drive.

USB Disk Ejector is great utility to make this easier to do and easier to see. It’s available here.

Disk Ejector is portable, so you can put it on your computer or on any of your drives and have it available no matter what computer you’re using. It’s donationware, which means it’s completely free to use with no limitations.

If you like it and use it often, the developer appreciates your donation and provides a safe link on the site.

Take a look at this screen cast for more information on both ways to eject your disks.

Recover lost photos

It’s easy to fall into a trance when working with Windows and just keep clicking OK OK OK OK OK.

Windows does ask if you’re sure you want to delete those photos, but sometimes we’re not paying attention to the question, and sometimes we’re really sure but we’re also really wrong.

Uh, oh, this SD card is empty. Now what?

Well, if you accidentally delete photos (or anything else) from your computer’s hard drive, start by looking in the Recycle Bin.

If the files are there, you can easily Restore them to their previous location.

But if you delete files from a camera or smart phone SD card, they’re not likely to show up in your Recycle Bin, and you’re going to need some help getting them back.

I like a free program called Recuva. You can get it here. Recuva will recover photos from your computer or digital camera card. It will recover many other types of files, too.

Recuva is easy to use, even when you’ve broken out in a cold sweat because you deleted all the wedding photos.

Control Facebook email notifications

Several times every week, someone tells me they were dragged kicking and screaming into Facebook by the grandkids, and they hate it because now they get Facebook in their email.

I can help with that.

First, if you really hate Facebook, stop using Facebook. You can just stop using it, or you can deactivate or delete your account.

There is no one holding a gun to your head forcing you to use Facebook.

On the other hand, if what’s bothering you is getting email every time something happens on Facebook, just change the settings for Facebook Notifications.

For instance, I have a personal Facebook account, but no need to receive most notifications in my email. When I want to look at Facebook, I look at Facebook, and I can see there and then what’s going on with my Facebook friends.

The only notifications I receive by email are to do with security and tagging. Facebook provides instructions here.

While you’re at it, take a look at the Facebook Privacy Checkup and make sure you understand and control what others can see and learn about you. It’s easy and clear.

Do you need help with your computer? I'm here to help you and your home or business computer get along!

Links

USB Disk Ejector 

Safely Eject USB Flash Drives 

Recuva 

Deactivate or Delete your Facebook Account 

How do I adjust my email notifications from Facebook? 

What is the Facebook Privacy Checkup and how can I find it? 

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.