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What's with viewing a device as a portalbe device?

Submitted by rubber gun on October 21, 2008 to Aesthetics, Annoyance, Usability

I plug in my usb stick, and it's recognized as a fat32 volume. OK.
Now, i can right-clic, and view it as a portable device. In which a "removable device" window opens, which is normally not accessible. In addition, "properties" of my USB and removable device "properties" do not display the same information. My USB gets listed as standard hierarcal device.

treat devices as standard devices

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Low

Not fixed

Discussion (1 comments)

rubber gun wrote on October 21, 2008, 6:35am

Changed title from [What's with viewing a device as a removable device?] to [What's with viewing a device as a portalbe device?].
Changed problem description.

adso wrote on November 3, 2008, 6:05pm

What you are seeing is an alternate way to interact with a flash drive, via the WPD Shell Namespace Extension (NSE). WPD (also an API) is primarily useful for applications that want a uniform way to access any device that can hold media (e.g., photos, videos and music). You'll note that "Open as a Portable Device" is not the default for flash drives. If you attach an MTP device (like a Sansa or Sony or Zen), or attach a PTP camera, you will be browsing via the WPD NSE by default.

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