USB Drive Still Exists in XYp After Removal

[TekHead]

I am currently evaluating (expired) v19.90.0100.
I also just installed v20.60.0200 to evaluate and check this USB drive problem.
It still exists for me. Maybe its a eval limitation?

When I insert a USB drive (and I've tried this with several USB drives), XYp correctly displays the drive letter and its volume label.
In my case (see Figure #1 in attached PDF):
==> Drive Letter = E:
==> Volume Label = 8 GB USB D#1

After opening then closing the file on the USB drive, I'll change the point of focus to the D: drive, then disconnect the USB drive. This results in XYp still displaying the drive letter but not the Volume Label (see Figure #2 in attached PDF). I would think that your intention is to remove this drive letter completely from the display when the USB drive is removed. That's how Windows' file manager has worked for decades.

When I click on the drive letter, XYp displays a message in the right pane (see Figure #3 in attached PDF)
==> Location currently not available.
==> E:
When I close out XYp and then re-open it, the (phantom) drive letter still appears.

Windows file explorer has no problem with inserting and removing USB drives from its display.
When I check Windows Disk Management utility, there is no E: drive listed.

Am I overlooking something, a tweak, eval copy, etc.?

My platform is as follows:
Windows 10 home v1909 (OS Build 18363.476)
HP Spectre laptop

USB Drive Prob.jpg (269.86 KiB) Viewed 972 times

Sorry. I didn't know how to attach a PDF file, instead of displaying this in-line.

[admin]

Trial day #214, not bad!

Well, what you see is by design. It's part of the "Mini Tree" functionality. The basic idea of the "Mini Tree" is to represent your personal browsing history instead of everything that exists. As part of this approach removable drives are kept visible in the Tree after removal expecting that you will use them again later.

[TekHead]

Thank you for that prompt reply and for taking the time to explain the reasoning.

I for the life of me don't understand why XYp would not display real time results, but instead display what I looked at, at a previous point in time. While I may not agree with the developer's reasoning for deciding to do this, I do respect their right to develop their software according to their own choosing/preferences.

As a former (retired) Methods and Procedures Analyst, Systems Analyst, and (computer) Systems Developer, there is something to be said for consistency of the user experience. All of the file managers that I have tried/used over the years (and I go back to before the letter P and the letter C were put together and every home had a PC), every one of them removed the USB drive letter from the display when it was physically removed.

That said, your reply leads me to 2 questions:
1. do you know of any other occasion where XYp does not display real-time conditions?
2. is there a way (user tweak) I can do to switch it to real-time?

XYp is by far the best file manager I've ever encountered - especially in the Win-10 environment. Incredibly feature rich, too!
BTW: I'll be purchasing a license just as soon as I can figure out how to open/start a PayPal account.

Thanks for developing this software.

[admin]

The "Mini Tree" functionality I mentioned is a special feature that you, intentionally or not, have enabled. You can turn it off here: View | Mini Tree | Mini Tree. If it's turned off the tree will be real time and exhaustive.

* * *

Just to extend the explanation of the "Mini Tree" behavior: The "Mini Tree" does not automatically add nodes when they come to existence (e.g. when another app creates a new folder) -- this is in order to stay "mini". Now there is a certain class of nodes that regularly come and go, namely removable drives. They should be available in the Mini Tree when they are there (when you plug in a USB stick you want to use it), but since the "Mini Tree" does not automatically add nodes we decided to just not remove them automatically on unplugging.

Such a stale node is recognizable as stale:
1) There is no plus/minus symbol in front of it
2) It has a small question mark overlayed on the icon (the visibility of this depends on the Windows version)

2019-12-07_110530.png (641 Bytes) Viewed 929 times

[TekHead]

Again, thank you for your valuable response.

I do realize that software is an art form. If you ask for an opinion from 10 people, you get 20 opinions and no two opinions may agree.

And, like art, if you don't like it don't buy it. I just purchased the lifetime subscription to XYp. Keep up the great work!

- Howie -

[admin]

Great, thanks!