USB Flash Drives

I think they are as about as cool a device as I have seen in some time. I bought a little 64mb for $10 about 6 months ago just for fun. Now I use it all the time and it doesn't come close to doing what I need it to do. I want a couple of 512mb or larger drives. I read a comment from another member that IBM is coming out with a 4gb drive in a few months for $150, which is about the going price for 1gb now. That price seems low but who knows. Anyone have any intel on the future or suggestions as to which units are the best? I like the 512mb titanium cruiser because it retracts but for $100+ I can't see myself buying it.

I mainly use mine as a sneaker LAN between my machine and my wife's. She shoots photos by the hundreds, I work on them and then give them back to her for printing or further adjustments. She shoots 100mb-700mb so it's a bunch of trips back and forth with my little 64mb drive. She has a CD burner and I don't but I have a DVD burner and she doesn't. I also download at work via high speed and bring home files that way.

The titanium one is AWESOME! But at ~$150 for 512 Mb (The last time I checked) it makes my iPod look cheap as far as price per gig goes.

(~$15/gig for iPod vs $300/gig Titanium flash drive)

With that volume, it might make more sense to set up a real network, either wired or wireless for your home PCs. Use the 64MB flash drive for downloads and use a file splitter if you have a file bigger than 64MB.

These sure are great little devices. I've had a 64MB Lexar Jump Drive for about a year now. Use it to bring files home from work. Haven't hardly touched a floppy since. I've been keeping an eye on their prices, but they don't seem to have dropped much, if at all. When I can find a 128MB one for less than $20, I'll get another.

I just bought a 512mb Titanium from buy.com (got it yesterday) for $104.66
Seems just like a hard drive to me...

I've got a cruzer micro 512MB, it's a lot smaller than the titanium, but it's also slower and less durable. 1 thing i don't like aobut the titanium is that the USB plug itself is not covered, it's just recessed into the titanium case.

search for i-stick, tiny little buggers. Luv mine!

My Iomega MiniMicro 128mb is on my keychain. The minimicro is the only flashdrive I have ever seen that is smaller than the Arc AAA and swiss army knife on my keychain. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif

Yeah, setup a home network for that, that's how we do it here at my house. It's not too terribly difficult. However, if that is simply not an option get a usb external hard drive.

I had an old 40GB hard drive sitting around so I bought an enclosure at NewEgg. Turned it into an external usb hard drive. Total cost for enclosure and hard drive was right around $70.00 (or there abouts). That's what I use to back up all my data, along with burning to cd, some on my wife's laptop too, nice to have redundancy ya know.

Mike

http://www.visiontek.com/ vision tek go drive 1 gig for 130 then theres a 30 rebate so 100 buks plus shipping

I keep meaning to buy one of these /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/6b3b/

I use a 128 and a 32 flash drive and love them. If I get bigger ones they have to be USB2.

I find that for sneaker netting to my wife's Win98 machine the flash drives are a PITA. We use Compact Flash to sneaker to the Win98 box. It works well.

I just bought a 20 Gig! (yes TWENTY GIG!) USB powered hard drive called a Firefly for $170.00 from BestBuy. It is about the size of a pack of cigarettes but only about 3/8" thick and is made of magnesium alloy, weighs only about 2 ounces. It has no power supply or batteries, it is powered completely from the USB bus. Works great! Totally cool device!

My only advice about these drives: buy one that comes with crypto software, or has an option of downloadable crypto software. I've bought a Lexar that came with crypto software, and my Cruzer Mini has software downloadable from their site.

The drives are so convenient that it's very tempting to put important files on them. They're also easy to lose, and at some point or other criminals will keep their eyes out for them, for ID theft purposes.

Make sure you protect your important files on your USB drive!

I agree that the portability/loseability/stealability of these devices require the use of encryption.

I use them without the included crypto software. That way I can use my own software so I can have one encrypted volume for use on Win boxes, and another cyrpto scheme for UNIX machines. I have one crypto scheme that can even be decoded on either type of OS with software that is always on the drive. Having this all on one flash drive can be handy.

I also like being able to reserve part of the drive for UN-encrypted data, which software included with SOME of the flash drives won't let you do.

The little pen "drives" are cool but I have a left over IBM 340MB micro drive and a "loose" 512MB CF card. I bought a USB card reader- slide in the drive/card and plug it into the port, for the rare occasions I need to cary data around. Fry's recently had 1GB CF cards for $80 after mail-in rebate. ( /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rant.gif I paid over $200 for mine a year or so ago.) Card readers are cheap and can make use of "legacy" memory you might have laying around.

Larry

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DieselDave said:
She has a CD burner and I don't but I have a DVD burner and she doesn't.

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Not to go off topic, but most DVD burners have the capability to burn CD's. Just FYI. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

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Sinjz said:
Not to go off topic, but most DVD burners have the capability to burn CD's. Just FYI. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[/ QUOTE ]


/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif
I see I do have a CD burner. Thanks, life is harder when I make it that way.

See Dave, told you that Florida and Computers don't mix. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/hahaha.gif