Using Your Digital Camera Flash Memory Stick To Store and Transfer Files From One PC To Another in Emergency

This tip is to help my friends who sometimes don’t have secondary storage devices/media or network access to transfer files from one PC to another. In such cases, they can use their normal digital camera with flash memory stick and USB connectivity to transfer files from one computer to another remote computer.

People often think that the digital camera flash memory is only meant for transferring photo files from their camera to their PC/laptops. No! The flash memory stick of the digital camera is like a normal USB disk and can be used to store and transfer files (non photo format) from one computer to another.

More specific details of the scenario follow:

One of my friend came to me as Internet access at his office wasn’t working and he wanted to download files from my Internet connected PC and then carry them on his CD to the office.

After downloading the files, his CD didn’t get recognized even after formatting etc. on my Windows Vista Business PC. It had happened earlier also that the CD’s burnt at my DVD writer weren’t recognized at his Windows XP PC. I didn’t have a USB drive and neither did he and moreover, He didn’t have a laptop or some other way of carrying the files. He wanted to desperately carry the files from my PC today only and there didn’t seem to be any easy method of carrying those small sized files to his remote Windows XP PC (with USB port).

I got an idea. I attached my Sony CyberShot DSC-P100 digital camera with my PC – Dell Vostro 400 USB port, powered ON the camera, it got detected as a removable drive with F:. Now I made a folder on the Digital camera flash memory stick drive (shown as F: on my PC) and transferred the small sized files from my PC to the camera flash memory. My camera had a total of 255 MB flash memory capacity and the files to be copied from my PC for my friend were only of 156 KB.

After copying was over, I closed the digital camera drive window (F:), left clicked on its USB icon on the right bottom taskbar and then clicked on Safely remove Sony DSC – Drive(F:). Got the standard “Safe To Remove Hardware Message”.

I powered off the Sony Digital DSC -P100 camera and gave it with the camera to PC USB attachment cable to my friend. He took it and attached the CyberShot camera to his office Windows XP PC with USB port and was able to copy his files from the camera flash disk to his PC without any issues.

So, the moral of this post is that in case of emergency, you can use your digital camera flash memory stick to store and transfer files from one computer to another. This can be a useful method where the file transfer methods such as network (LAN), Internet, CD, DVD and normal USB disk are not working/not available.

As usual, some screenshots relevant to this post are given:

USB device detected on attaching Sony Cybershot P100 Camera to USB port

Using Ctrl key and the mouse left click to select only the required files in Windows Explorer

Creating a New Folder by Right Clicking on the blank area of the Removable disk window and then clicking on New and Folder

Successful copying of files from one drive to another drive in Windows Vista Business

Single left clicking on the USB icon on taskbar to remove the camera attached with PC USB port

Standard message of USB device can be removed safely on Windows Vista

Hope that you would like this post of mine.

Let me know your comments on the idea of using Digital camera flash memory stick for storing and transferring computer files from one PC to another PC.

Cheers!