Which USB Flash drive/pen to get?

[ANTant]

I am interesting getting my father one of these. I have seen these devices
at work, and they are actually neat. I am trying to get my father to get
away from 3.5" disks!!!

I am amazed by how many different brands, types, shapes, etc. of these.
I need help in determining what is the best ones out there. Obviously,
I just need a small size (less than 128 MB), light (maybe a pen or with
a keychain -- must be able to handle abuse from other keys, swinging,
etc.), must be compatible with most OS' (98 and up and trying to avoid
drivers; Linux and MacOS might be a possibility), etc.

Now, the biggest thing that drove me nuts was my father using the disks
to save files. He uses Word documents on disk instead of HDDs. It is
very slow, noisy, and always give save error (not enough space or
whatever). Will USB drives have this problem too?

I am in Los Angeles, CA area so I am looking for any sales to check
out these things. Thank you in advance.
--
"May 10,000 ants never invade your underwear drawer." --unknown
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \ Ant @ The Ant Farm: http://antfarm.ma.cx
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[J.Clarke]

On Tue, 16 Dec 2003 02:33:53 -0600

I am interesting getting my father one of these. I have seen these
devices at work, and they are actually neat. I am trying to get my
father to get away from 3.5" disks!!!

Viable alternatives to 3.5" disk:

CD-R/RW, DVD+/-R/RW, DVD-RAM, LS-120/240, Zip.

All are supported one war or another under most current operating
systems. You can get CDs the size and shape of a business card that
hold a great deal more than a diskette--nice thing about CDs is that
just about any machine you encounter can read them. You can also get
3.5"(approximately--80mm officially) DVDs that hold 1.4 GB. LS-120 and
240 can read and write standard diskettes much faster and more quietly
than a regular diskette drive and also store 120 or 240 MB on their
special disks--trouble is the special disks cost more than 9 GB DVD-RAM
disks. Zip can hold up to 750 MB on disks about the same size as
diskettes but again the cost is high.

I am amazed by how many different brands, types, shapes, etc. of
these. I need help in determining what is the best ones out there.
Obviously, I just need a small size (less than 128 MB), light (maybe a
pen or with a keychain -- must be able to handle abuse from other
keys, swinging, etc.), must be compatible with most OS' (98 and up and
trying to avoid drivers; Linux and MacOS might be a possibility), etc.

You're not going to avoid drivers for such things.

Now, the biggest thing that drove me nuts was my father using the
disks to save files. He uses Word documents on disk instead of HDDs.
It is very slow, noisy, and always give save error (not enough space
or whatever). Will USB drives have this problem too?

The can't be noisy, they have no moving parts. They'll give a save
error if you fill them up just like any other media. Will 128 MB do for
him?

 

[LegMan]

I am interesting getting my father one of these. I have seen these
devices at work, and they are actually neat. I am trying to get my
father to get away from 3.5" disks!!!

I am amazed by how many different brands, types, shapes, etc. of
these.
I need help in determining what is the best ones out there. Obviously,
I just need a small size (less than 128 MB), light (maybe a pen or
with a keychain -- must be able to handle abuse from other keys,
swinging, etc.), must be compatible with most OS' (98 and up and
trying to avoid drivers; Linux and MacOS might be a possibility), etc.

Now, the biggest thing that drove me nuts was my father using the
disks to save files. He uses Word documents on disk instead of HDDs.
It is very slow, noisy, and always give save error (not enough space
or whatever). Will USB drives have this problem too?

I am in Los Angeles, CA area so I am looking for any sales to check
out these things. Thank you in advance.

Ant,

I have both the Lexar 128mb JumpDrive and a Soyo 64mb CigarPro.
Both as USB 1x.

Of the two, I very much prefer/recommend the Lexar ($25ish) as it
seems to be made better (physically), smaller and is of overall
better quality. They are also more responsive with their rebates!

The only advantage of the Soyo is that it can be made bootable, if
your computer's BIOS allows it.

I don't know about Mac or Linux, but the minimum OS is Windows 98.
Windows9x DO require a driver.

HTH,

LegMan (remove 999 for eMail)

 

[Gary L.]

I am interesting getting my father one of these. I have seen these devices
at work, and they are actually neat. I am trying to get my father to get
away from 3.5" disks!!!

I am amazed by how many different brands, types, shapes, etc. of these.
I need help in determining what is the best ones out there. Obviously,
I just need a small size (less than 128 MB), light (maybe a pen or with
a keychain -- must be able to handle abuse from other keys, swinging,
etc.), must be compatible with most OS' (98 and up and trying to avoid
drivers; Linux and MacOS might be a possibility), etc.

Now, the biggest thing that drove me nuts was my father using the disks
to save files. He uses Word documents on disk instead of HDDs. It is
very slow, noisy, and always give save error (not enough space or
whatever). Will USB drives have this problem too?

I am in Los Angeles, CA area so I am looking for any sales to check
out these things. Thank you in advance.

I have two of these things: a USB 1.1 128 MB drive that is "CompUSA"
brand, and a USB 2 128 MB drive that is PNY Attache brand. Both were
inexpensive and work fine. Neither required any third party driver for
use with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Red Hat Linux 9 or SuSE Linux 9.
I've had no software compatibility problems, except for Red Hat 9 that
had problems detecting the drive if it wasn't plugged in at boot time.
You plug in the drive and the system detects the drive and a moment
later it is available through a drive letter. You do need to "eject"
it from the system using the proper tool (an icon on the task bar for
Windows), unlike a floppy. The documentation states that a driver is
required for Windows 98 & 98 SE, and the drive is unsupported under
Windows 95 or earlier. I believe that no driver is required for Mac OS
10, but I don't know about earlier Mac OSes.

The USB 1.1 drive works on every system I have tried. The USB 2 drive
draws more power and doesn't work directly with un-powered USB 1.1
hubs or plugged directly into my ThinkPad 600. It will work with the
ThinkPad (and other USB 1.1 systems) if I use a powered USB 2 hub. The
issue is power draw rather than transfer rate. The advantage of the
USB 2 drive is that it is significantly faster on a USB 2 system:
write speeds can be twice the speed of the USB 1.1 drive.

I think that this is a good solution for your father. The larger
capacity will avoid the full disk errors he gets with floppies. It is
faster, easier to use and more reliable than trying to use a CR-RW as
a floppy disk with packet-writing software. It is more reliable and
faster than a Zip disk. It makes no sounds at all.

If your father has an older system (which seems likely with the
mention of Windows 98) then get a USB 1.1 drive in the 128 or 256 MB
range. The smaller ones aren't that much cheaper so don't bother. If
your father has a newer system with USB 2, then get a USB 2 drive.
Look for a sale at Fry's or CompUSA and you should end up in the
$30-50 range for a 128 MB drive.

- -
Gary L.
Reply to the Newsgroup for the benefit of all

 

[ANTant]

Viable alternatives to 3.5" disk:

CD-R/RW, DVD+/-R/RW, DVD-RAM, LS-120/240, Zip.

The problem is that not all computers have CD writers if he wants to save
files. There are more USB ports than CD writers on various machines.

All are supported one war or another under most current operating
systems. You can get CDs the size and shape of a business card that
hold a great deal more than a diskette--nice thing about CDs is that
just about any machine you encounter can read them. You can also get
3.5"(approximately--80mm officially) DVDs that hold 1.4 GB. LS-120 and
240 can read and write standard diskettes much faster and more quietly
than a regular diskette drive and also store 120 or 240 MB on their
special disks--trouble is the special disks cost more than 9 GB DVD-RAM
disks. Zip can hold up to 750 MB on disks about the same size as
diskettes but again the cost is high.

You're not going to avoid drivers for such things.

The can't be noisy, they have no moving parts. They'll give a save
error if you fill them up just like any other media. Will 128 MB do for
him?

128 MB should be enough.
--
"May 10,000 ants never invade your underwear drawer." --unknown
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \ Ant @ The Ant Farm: http://antfarm.ma.cx
| |o o| | E-mail: (e-mail address removed) or (e-mail address removed)
\ _ / Remove ANT if replying by e-mail from a newsgroup.
( )

 

[Roger Blake]

The problem is that not all computers have CD writers if he wants to save
files. There are more USB ports than CD writers on various machines.

Not all computers have USB ports, there are many older systems in
service. (In fact just the other day I was working on a network
in which the most recent system was a 386 running Windows 3.1.)

Particularly if you deal with "legacy" systems a lot, diskettes are
still very useful.

 

[Rod Speed]

Not all computers have USB ports,

Sure, but it doesnt cost much to add them.

there are many older systems in service.

Easy enough to add a USB port to those.

(In fact just the other day I was working on a network in which
the most recent system was a 386 running Windows 3.1.)

That sort of thing is so silly that its not worth worrying about.

Particularly if you deal with "legacy" systems
a lot, diskettes are still very useful.

Sure, but few need to bother with such complete dinosaurs.