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MS Office Forum / Word / Word Errors / August 2008Word crashes saving to USB storage
This has happened with me twice, once in a critical application. Once it happened with a USB hard drive, the other time on a flash drive. I open a document in Word, make changes, and save it. Word crashes on the save, giving an error message like "Drive cannot be accessed", then offering to save it elsewhere. When I select that option, Word crashes and shuts down. It leaves behind 0 byte ~*.doc temporary files. Has anyone else seen this?  SignatureAsad Abidi UCLA EE Department NEVER save directly to removable storage: it is now the number 1 way that files are destroyed. It has to do with the way that Word uses temporary files and the way it 'builds' a final saved file. It needs rapid read/write access to the active folder and if this is on a removable media, it usually doesn't work. Always save to the local hard drive and then COPY to the removable media. SignatureTerry Farrell - Word MVP http://word.mvps.org/ > This has happened with me twice, once in a critical application. Once it > happened with a USB hard drive, the other time on a flash drive. [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > Has anyone else seen this? Terry, Thanks for the reply. The odd thing is that I have created Word files on removable media for at least ten years: sciteq drives, zip drives, usb drives, ... However, I have seen this problem only in the past few months. Is this an outcome of the latest "improvements" to Word? The first time this happened was when a proposal was due the next day. I lost everything, and had to reconstruct the document in skeleton form from my memory. I'll stop doing this, but it's an easy enough mistake for others to make---as your post implies. I think it is important to bring up this problem with the Word development team. Word should know when it is writing to removable media. BTW, the failure is repeatable, and Word aborts due to File Permission error on the file. Mission critical programs (ones on which funding depends!) should never crash irrecoverably. SignatureAsad Abidi UCLA EE Department > NEVER save directly to removable storage: it is now the number 1 way that > files are destroyed. It has to do with the way that Word uses temporary [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > > > Has anyone else seen this? Asad I'll agree strongly with your last statement! I think that you have been very lucky not to have corrupted documents previously: it is far from uncommon. Without a major change tot he way Word creates its files, I don't believe that there is much that can be done except perhaps detect and warn against working directly with removable media. Terry > Terry, > [quoted text clipped - 43 lines] >> > >> > Has anyone else seen this? I too have been using flash drives for years with no problems until I lost a vital script the other day. I'll start following the HDD copy advice, and I'm sure it's very sound... So thank you. But isn't it strange that we're all experiencing these problems in the last couple of months? SignatureAl > Asad > [quoted text clipped - 55 lines] > >> > > >> > Has anyone else seen this? Nope. It has been going on for years, first with floppy drives, then with CDRs and now with Flash drives. It is to do with the way Word works with temp files and how it builds the final 'saved' version from all the temp files it creates whilst editing. And to do this, it creates another temp file in the 'active' folder - in this case the flash drive. Stick to copying and you won't have any further problems. It also means that you should have a 'backup copy' just in case you lose your flash drive when transporting the document elsewhere! Terry >I too have been using flash drives for years with no problems until I lost >a [quoted text clipped - 78 lines] >> >> > >> >> > Has anyone else seen this? Sorry to bring this topic back from the dead, but I have seen this several times due to working with student use computer labs. My question is this: Is there any official Microsoft document stating that people should not work on files directly off a usb flash device? This problem is showing up a lot more often here recently and people way over me are saying they want something official to send out to users about this or I need to keep working on it until I get the problem to go away if I cannot find anything official. Thanks! > Nope. It has been going on for years, first with floppy drives, then with > CDRs and now with Flash drives. It is to do with the way Word works with [quoted text clipped - 89 lines] > >> >> > > >> >> > Has anyone else seen this? Hi, Here is a topical answer from http://news.office-watch.com/t/default.aspx?a=661&template=print-article.htm: "Opening Office documents from removable storage 31 July 2008 - Office Watch Since we wrote about removable drives and drive letters we've had long time Office users asking about opening documents directly - should it be done at all. Many years ago, it wasn't a good idea to open a document directly from a non local hard drive - meaning a floppy disk or network share. Office users got into the habit of copying the document to a local drive, working on it in Word / Excel / Powerpoint, closing the document then copying it back to the floppy disk or network share. In those days floppy disks were very slow and the few computers on networks were also quite inefficient - plug-in USB hard drives were years in the future. But the main problem was Office and especially Word - not only would it open the document directly but all temporary or working files were saved to the same location. With a floppy disk it was easy to run out of disk space and even when you didn't get an error, Word ran very slowly. These days things are quite different. Floppy disks are all but dead and their replacement, USB 'sticks' are much more reliable and considerable faster. Network performance and reliability has improved beyond belief. Microsoft Office has long since fixed the problems of accessing non-local drives. These days temporary files are saved to the local hard drive not the same path as the document. Office 2007 / OOXML documents are much smaller than their 'doc/xls/ppt' predecessors which reduces the disk read/write requirements even more. With all those changes over time, Office users are in a good position to directly open documents from removable storage and work on them without a pre/post copying ritual. It may be faster and more reliable to temporarily copy a document to a local drive while you work on it but usually that's not necessary." So in many ways the answer is still better be safe than sorry... :) Cheers, Robert ------------------------------------------------------- > Sorry to bring this topic back from the dead, but I have seen this several > times due to working with student use computer labs. My question is this: [quoted text clipped - 99 lines] >>>> >> > >>>> >> > Has anyone else seen this? SignatureCheers Robert I'm not sure where the writer gets the idea that "These days temporary files are saved to the local hard drive not the same path as the document." They certainly can be, but you have to enable the Tools | Options | Save option to "Make local copy of files stored on network or removable drives." I believe this option is *not* enabled by default. We see enough posts from folks who have saved to USB drives and ended up with garbage that I would still be chary of saving *anywhere* other than the HD. SignatureSuzanne S. Barnhill Microsoft MVP (Word) Words into Type Fairhope, Alabama USA > Hi, > Here is a topical answer from [quoted text clipped - 167 lines] >>>>> >> > >>>>> >> > Has anyone else seen this? I have never seen anything 'official' but the proof is the number of users (especially students writing large theses, unfortunately) who post here asking for help opening 'an important document. It is nearly always that they have saved to removable media (mostly USB flash drives) and the document is totally bombed. I can only repeat that the best advice is to always save to the local (or networked) HDD and COPY to and from removable media. Terry Farrell > Sorry to bring this topic back from the dead, but I have seen this several > times due to working with student use computer labs. My question is this: [quoted text clipped - 119 lines] >> >> >> > >> >> >> > Has anyone else seen this? |
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