Patent ID: 7805569

Claim:
An image forming apparatus configured to receive a removable medium, the image forming apparatus comprising: a detection device that detects a state of the removable medium and creates state data; a non-volatile storage device that stores the state data; a state change detection device that detects a change of the state of the removable medium by comparing state data stored during a first power-on period of the image forming apparatus to state data stored during a second power-on period of the image forming apparatus, the first power-on period and the second power-on period being separated by a power-off period of the image forming apparatus; and a first notification device that produces a first notification if the state change detection device detects the change of the state of the removable medium; wherein: the removable medium is a removable storage medium and the state of the removable medium is at least one of a capacity of the removable storage medium, a quantity of data on the removable storage medium and identifier information on the removable storage medium; the image forming apparatus is configured to receive a plurality of removable media, wherein a user identifies whether each of the media is a monitored object or not a monitored object, and the image forming apparatus is configured to determine whether one, some, or all of the media has been identified by a user as the monitored object; the state change detection device detects the change of a state of at least one of the plurality of removable media, which a user has identified as a monitored object; and the first notification device producing the first notification when the change of the state of the at least one of the plurality of removable media identified as the monitored object is detected by the state change detection device.