IDEA: Useful desktop icon for USB flash drive

[jsmallberry]

Using a USB flash drive/removable drive should be easier.  I would like to see an icon on the desktop (or in a toolbar) of a newly inserted USB drive.  The drive letter used would be transparent to the user, the user would just see the drive volume label as the icon label.  Be able to move your files to and from it as usual, then right-click (or something) to eject it.  I hate the little system tray icon that you have to deal with for this task.  But here is the really cool part.  Even if the USB drive is not plugged in, you can still drag/drop files to the icon.  Then, when the USB drive is inserted, the files are automatically copied.

[mouser]

this is actually a kind of cool idea..
you could maybe just generalize it to say a utility that monitored certain directories/disks in explorer, and when it finds certain matches, it creates a shortcut for it on desktop, and likewise removed the shortcut when file/disk becomes unavailable.

[tenseiken]

Yeah, I really don't like having to open up the system tray icon, find the right item, and then stop it.  There ought to be an easier way to do that based on the drive letter, for example.

[jsmallberry]

The systray icon is an interface for the DLL: hotplug.dll.  If you type in the command:
%SystemRoot%\System32\RUNDLL32.EXE shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll
You will get the same window as if you double click/right click the systray icon.  But if you single click the icon, you get a list of devices in a menu and you can just click the menu item to stop/unplug/eject it, so you don't have to go to the window interface.  So therefore, there must be a way to stop a device without using the interface, programmatically that is.  Even if it calling/passing something to the hotplug.dll.  But I can't find that info anywhere.

based on the drive letter

I think the volume label for the USB device.  Because the drive letter can be changed between insertions.  But the volume label stays the same.

[mouser]

im gonna mark this as not doable as a snack..

[lanux128]

The systray icon is an interface for the DLL: hotplug.dll.  If you type in the command:
%SystemRoot%\System32\RUNDLL32.EXE shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll
You will get the same window as if you double click/right click the systray icon.

-jsmallberry (April 30, 2005, 12:27 PM)

tks a lot, jsmallberry...

being cmd-line junkie, i can create a cmd-line alias with this info....

Yeah, I really don't like having to open up the system tray icon, find the right item, and then stop it. 
There ought to be an easier way to do that...

-tenseiken (April 30, 2005, 11:23 AM)

hi tenseiken,
i'm not sure but maybe this page can be helpful to you... Tips for USB pen drives: Save removal

best regards,
lanux