This is a nice little utility - the USB device handling built into Windows (XP anyway) can be very frustrating. This tool makes it work just like you'd want it to work (at least it's the way I want it to work). MS could learn a little something from these guys. It's one of those things that's so small in some ways that you'd never think to look for a tool to replace the built-in functionality. But once you have this tool, it's irritating when you go to use it on a machine that doesn't have it (not the end of the world, but irritating).
- it gives you the name of the devices, so you don't have to guess or search out which drive letter windows gave your USB drive
- it tells you exactly what's going on if there's an open file (what file and what process has it open) preventing a 'clean' remove
- it'll close the processes for you or let you force the device to be stopped in that case, if you want (I can't remember if the Windows tool lets you do that short of just yanking the device out)
- it lets you configure the drive letter the device should get (this always really bugged me - without this, plugging the device into a different USB port would often cause Windows to assign a different drive letter)
Some things that I don't use, but I can imagine some people would find very useful:
- handles card readers that show as multiple drives intelligently
- lets you define actions to perform when a device is plugged in, stopped, etc.
It's a no-brainer for free. I hope this nets them some sales in the next update cycle.
