USB PRINTING

Whether you call them USB sticks, pen drives, jump drives, or thumb drives, USB flash drives have become the main form of portable digital storage. They’re easy to use, versatile, and work on almost every modern computer. Even with the rise of cloud storage we've seen in recent years, some people prefer the simplicity and convenience of the "plug-and-play" capabilities of flash drives. Many patrons use them to store their documents to print from our internet computers, and it’s overall a very simple process. It goes a little like a-this! (NOTE: This method also works with any type of external storage!)

First thing you'll want to do is find yourself a USB drive. They're sold in most electronics stores and supermarkets, even some pharmacies and convenience stores have started selling them. They come in any type of shape that you could possibly imagine (Here's some delicious sushi USB drives), and they have many different storage capacities (anywhere from 8 megabytes, up to 2 terabytes!).

AUTOPLAY

Once you have your flash drive handy, you can go ahead sign into one of our internet computers and insert the drive in one of the USB slots once the computer has booted up. After waiting a few seconds, you should get this "Autoplay" popup asking you what you'd like to do. Let's go ahead and select "Open folder to view files."

OPEN FROM WINDOWS EXPLORER (ALTERNATIVE METHOD)

If you didn't get the Autoplay popup, or if you've closed it, it's totally okay. You can still access your files without much hassle. Click the Start icon at the bottom left of the screen and you'll be presented with the Start Menu. After that you can go to the right column and select Computer.

A new window will open showing you details the computer you're currently using. What you'll be looking for is a removable disk or if you've renamed your flash drive, look for that. Also, pay attention to the storage capacity of the drive, that's an easy way to tell what's what. Once you've found your USB drive, go ahead and double-click on it and you should now be able to see your files! If you'd like further help with exploring files in Windows, check out this page!

PRINTING

Now that you see your files, the time has come to set them free! You can double-click on a file to bring it up on its program and release it from there. Alternatively, if you are positive that the file needs no modifications or revisions, you can select a file and print it using the Print box toolbar at the top of the window. You'll then need to follow the print release process in Pharos before it actually gets printed. The lesson I wrote on Pharos can be found here (look towards the bottom of the page).

EJECTING YOUR USB DEVICE

Let's rap about USB devices for a sec. Whenever you're using a device via a USB connection, whether it be smartphones, USB drives, mp3 players, etc., you'll need to eject it before disconnecting. USB devices tend run in the background even when you're not interacting with them. Interrupting these background processes can disrupt files on your device and could ultimately damage your device. Ejecting a device just ensures that the background processes are stopped so your device doesn't become corrupted.

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