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Imation products. For more information, including brochures, demos, and spec sheets, visit the USB Flash Devices product page.
What should I do after I insert the Imation Flash Drive into the USB port? If you have additional questions or comments, please contact our Technical Support.
As soon as the Imation Swivel Flash Drive is inserted into the USB port, the operating system will recognize and initialize the device. Afterwards, the drive will appear as an additional hard disk on the system, and can be used exactly like a hard disk. From Windows, to find the Imation Flash drive click on My Computer or Windows Explorer and the Imation Swivel Flash Drive will appear as an additional drive. Macintosh users will find the icon on their Desktop.
Imation’s Swivel Flash Drive has a write protect switch that prevents the user from accidentally deleting files. To make your drive accessible for writing, find the small switch with the lock and unlock symbols, located on the thin side of the drive. This is the write protect switch. With the drive plugged in to your computer, slide the write protect switch away from the USB connector. You will now be able to write to the drive. To re-engage write protection, slide the switch forward.
In some rare instances we have found that the write protect software can turn itself on. If all else fails, you can remove write protection by repartitioning your drive.
In the latest version of Disk Manager software, there is a write protect feature. When you bring up the Disk Manager program, in the upper left quadrant of the window you will see the words "Device Write Protect." If the write protect is engaged, the lettering will be blue and you will see a button depressed. But when the write protect feature is off, the lettering is black and there is no button visible.
The Imation Swivel Flash Drive can be infected with a virus if you save a virus-infected file to the unit. A virus-infected drive can then infect any other computer you might use with the drive. Avoid issues by using anti-virus software on your computer and update it regularly with the most recent virus definitions.
Windows Explorer has not refreshed after inserting the drive
Refresh the Windows Explorer by pressing the F5 key.
Drive is not fully inserted
Remove the Imation Flash Drive from the USB port and then reinsert it.
You use Windows 98SE and have not installed the driver
Install the driver for Windows 98SE.
Take appropriate precautions with your drive, just as you would any non-portable piece of equipment. Avoid dropping the drive, getting it wet, shaking it, or storing it in very hot or cold conditions. We suggest that you use the lanyard supplied with your drive to carry and store the Imation Swivel Flash Drive. Other methods of carrying the drive, for example on a key chain, are not covered under warranty and may result in breakage to the lanyard coupling.
In the event the Imation Swivel Flash Drive becomes wet, allow it to dry in a cool, dry place before trying to use it again. Water or other liquids may cause the drive to short circuit.
Your Imation Swivel Flash Drive comes formatted and ready to use right out of the box.
If you will be using the drive exclusively with Macintosh computers, do not format the Imation Swivel Flash Drive. The formatting message appears if your Macintosh has not yet been set up to read Windows-formatted files. Refer to your Mac's user manual to learn how to enable Windows file read functionality.
Also, be aware that when you format your Imation Swivel Flash Drive with NTFS, you will not be able to store as much data as your would without formatting. The format file used by NTFS will use some of the available space on the Flash drive — for instance, on a 128MB Imation Swivel Flash Drive, you may lose up to 8MB to the NTFS format files.
Yes, both the Imation Swivel Flash Drive and the Imation USB Flash Drive Mini do require power to read from or write to a memory cell. Your computer's USB connector interface can supply bidirectional data and low power to the device connected to it. The Imation 2.0 Flash Drives draw very little power and do not need external power, so they operate quite nicely off power supplied by the USB port. (Mac users, the drive draws more power than is supplied on the USB port on a Mac keyboard. If you use the keyboard port, you will get a low power message. You should use the Flash drives on the USB ports on your computer.)
Once the information is stored on the flash drive, no power is needed to maintain the data.
This problem occurs if you map a network drive to the first available drive letter following the drive letters for the local volumes and CD/DVD drives. When you install a new device or volume, a software called Mount Manager tries to assign drive letters to the new volumes. But since the software does not recognize mapped drive letters, it assigns the next available local drive letter to the new device. This causes a collision with the existing mapped network drive.
Since the problem is related to your Microsoft operating system, they are your best source for resolving this issue. For more information, click here.
Yes. Downloadable software for the Imation Swivel Flash Drive allows public & private partitioning and password privacy to protect your files from accidental erasure or unauthorized access. Note, the Imation Flash Drive Mini does not offer this feature.
To download the partitioning software for the Imation Swivel Flash Drive, click here.
Loading the Disk Manager software is required if you wish to partition your Imation Swivel Flash Drive, or use a partitioned Flash Drive on the computer. Otherwise, it is possible to open files stored in the public partition of the drive on any computer.
Yes. Windows XP will display a message stating that your Flash device would work faster on a USB 2.0 port, but the drive should function without problems in a USB 1.1 port.
In Windows 2000 and XP, you must be logged in as an administrator the first time you run the Disk Manager program, and at that time create a partition for your Imation Swivel Flash Drive and set a password for your partition. Otherwise a message will pop up every time the Disk Manager software executes, asking that you "run this software once as an administrator."
Once you have created a password while in the Administrator role, you can then change the password or change the partition for your Swivel Flash Drive, on the same computer, any number of times. Please note that all data will be lost each time you re-partition your Flash Drive.
Later, if you use your Imation Swivel Flash Drive on a computer where you do not have administrator privileges, you will be able to view information stored on the public partition of the Flash Drive. However you will not be able to view any information stored on the private partition.
This is similar to the set up used on many home computers, where parents designate themselves as administrators and create user access for their children in order to prevent the introduction of unwanted software. In corporate and educational settings, most users are not administrators. This is why a Flash Drive private partition created at home may become invisible when used at the office or at school.
No. The current power draw at idle state is about 95 mA (milliamps) for a 2GB drive. The current power draw during read/write is about 145 mA. The keyboard hub, like most un-powered USB hubs, provides up to 100mA and does not provide enough electrical draw for a Flash Drive. Typically all Flash Drives work well with an internal or a powered hub that supplies 500 mA.
Yes. If you have partitioned the Imation USB 2.0 Swivel Flash Drive, but now would like to clear the password and access the full capacity of the drive on a Macintosh, or on other computers, you can create a single partition using Disk Manager and then delete or ignore the Disk Manager.exe file. A single partition will be necessary to format the drive from Windows Explorer or format the drive from Macintosh Disk Utility. In the future you can always download and partition the drive again using Disk Manger, if you decide you want password protection again.
CAUTION: Remember this procedure will eliminate any files and programs on the drive.
To re-partition the drive to create one public partition:
- Double click on Disk Manager.exe
- Click on the Create Partition button
- Choose Public Area Only (single partition)
- Click OK
Your drive must be set up as a single public partition, since neither Windows Explorer nor the Macintosh OS will recognize a password protected partition.
To format the drive in Windows:
- Go to My Computer
- Locate the corresponding drive letter for the Swivel Flash drive (i.e. removable drive F)
- Right click
- Choose Format from the menu
Your drive must be set up as a single public partition, since neither Windows Explorer nor the Macintosh OS will recognize a password protected partition.
To format the drive in Mac OS X:
- Go to your hard drive icon
- Open Applications
- Find and open Utilities
- Double click on Disk Utilities
- In the upper left window highlight the line “__MB Imation USB Flash”
- Select Volume Format and name the volume
- Click on Erase in the tool bar at the top of the window
We do not encourage purposely submerging the Imation Flash Wristband. If it does become wet we recommend thoroughly drying the flash drive off prior to use. A wet Flash drive may result in electrical components shorting and/or corroding.
When you launch the Imation Flash Manager program for the Imation Swivel Pro Flash drive, you will see a check box in the lower left quadrant of the dialog box. Place a check mark in the box to enable Write Protect.
To access the secure partition, you will need to remove the secure partition first by reformatting it. This action will cause any data stored on your drive to be lost but you will be able to set a new password and retransfer your data to the drive.
To resize or remove a secure partition, you will need to do the following:
- Open the Flash Manager software on your hard drive
- Choose Create a partition
- Move the slider to zero (0)
To Identify Encryption Manager version:
- Right click on RunEncryptionManager.exe
- Scroll down to "Properties" and left click
- Go to "Version" tab to identify version number