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Best USB Flash Storage?
Jennifer asks: "I'm thinking of making the plunge and buying some sort of USB flashdisk. I just migrated to a laptop without a floppy, and want some sort of quick and easy medium, preferably bootable, for moving files around. My idea solution would be a SDcard reader that is small, bootable, Hi-Speed USB and sleek/sexy. SD based means I could have a number of cards ready to go, such as a linux card, a Win98 card, maybe even a Win2k card if I could pare the install down to 256MB, plus other stuff, including compatibility with my Palm.
Is booting purely BIOS dependent? What have your experiences been with these things?"
I believe that booting off of a USB port is BIOS dependent since it needs to be able to not only detect that the USB drive is a storage drive but also have a stack to use it like a hard drive or what-not.
For instance, I am able to boot off of a USB memory key and a USB Zip drive on an IBM ThinkPad X20/X21, but not a T21. I haven't tried it on the A series or any of the newer T series.
Unless your laptop is very new, it probably will not be able to boot from the removable USB storage. Check to see if it is an option in the boot order within the BIOS. If not, then you're out of luck, unless there is a BIOS upgrade that enables it.
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You mentioned that you want to use the usb drive as a replacement for a floppy. What about using your cdrw drive instead? At a buck a pop, cdrw's are much cheaper than flash storage, and with udf filesystem, you can random write to them. If size is a problem, I've seen those 210 meg mini cdr/cdrw's at varisous computer shows (although I don't understand why they cost more than a full size cd). Get a bunch of those, and if you need cases, you can get Gamecube cases (same size disk), and they'll fit in your shirt pocket.
You started by asking about a USB flashdisk, which I interpretted as meaning a USB "memory key" of some type.
... umm ... basically I have no idea if this post is even on topic.
... it runs on an original Pentium 100 MHz CPU (floating point bug included at no extra charge). I was overjoyed when I realized that this older (yet very well designed laptop) could boot off a "new" technology Compact Flash card simply by using a PCMCIA PC Card adapter. That ability breathed even more life into an old laptop.
But then you started talking about flash cards, so
If you went with, for example, Compact Flash, you'll have the advantage of being able to use a PC Card adapter. I have little experience with laptops, but I suspect that while you may find the ability to boot off a USB-connected flash card is rare, the ability to boot off a PC Card of some type (or a device connected through a PC Card adapter) is more common. (At about $15 with little effort searching, PC Card adapters are also very cheap.)
Case in point, I have an ancient IBM ThinkPad 560. It's 7 years old I believe
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
Some USB Flash memories allow Password Protection. Is there Linux support for this feature? A Manufacturer says it only works on Windows, but I find it hard to believe that noone has used that.
get 7 free Japanese lessons.
Watch out -- SD is slllllllllllllloooooooowwwwww. Other flash formats are faster, but they're still really not suitable for running an OS from.
A 16mb SD card came with my Palm m500. On the back of the card:
So, MMC is definitely better in this regard.
BTW, the MMC card reader that came with my RCA CC-9390 DVC camcorder works under Linux with the standard USB drivers. It talks SCSI over USB and then the card has a x86 boot sector and partition table indicating a FAT filesystem. It all works. I was quite surprised and impressed.
I don't know if a SD card reader would work under Linux due to all the DRM crapola. I don't know of any open SD reader/writer drivers. There's a closed one for one of the Linux PDAs however.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Flash chip technology advances have allowed flash chips to achieve sustained data transfer rates of 5-7MB/sec
I beleive USB 1.1 supports a rate of 12MB/s so it looks anything more (like the 480MB/s of USB 2) wouldn't really help you.
I tend to like compact flash the best of any of the competeing memory standards currently. Once you get that small size doesnt really matter that much to me. It is definitly the cheapest, available in the largest sizes, and from everything I have heard it is by far the most durable.
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
I would strongly suggest using CompactFlash rather than SD. It's faster (no dealing with DRM), and is basically ATAPI: with a $5 reader, you can plug it directly into any ATAPI-compatible computer and boot just like a hard drive. Plus, if you've got your heart set on a full Win2K and Office XP install, Microdrives come in sizes up to 1 GB (although you lose the durability of flash; they're just tiny hard drives in a CompactFlash form factor). Plus, a quick trip to Pricewatch says that CompactFlash is about half the price of SD for any given size, and is availible in a wider range of sizes. You might lose Palm compatability, but, at least to my eye, the benefits outweigh that one loss.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
I have booted off my USB2.0/Firewire Asus (SCB-1608-D) DVD-ROM/CDr/CD-RW drive though. It's a very nice drive and I recommend it highly and often. The Asus drive I've even gotten to mount under PS2 Linux and it comes with a handy little carry bag.
The current maximum size of a MMC is 128MB, but most likely you can only find 64MB cards on the market, on the other hand you can easily find a 1GB SD card.
Don't forget that your Palm is already a SD card reader. Just install Palm desktop on multiple machines then you can easily transfer files between them. Oh if you can a Tungsten T or Tungsten C, you can even transfer the files wirelessly.
Are you doing this?
In addition to UDF, you need packet write, both "experimental." The packet write stuff I've been able to find seems badly dated. (>12-18 months) Plus it seems to be drive-dependent whether you can do it even with patches.
Do you have some more up-to-date links you could share?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
There are two things you want to do here. You want to be able to boot your laptop from a removable medium, and you want to transfer data to other systems. I don't see why you have to have a single solution for both. Maybe it's kewl to have a bootable USB key or SD card, but is it practical? Booting from external media is not something you have to do very often, but when you do have to do it, you really have to do it. So you need something reliable. Almost all recent systems can boot from the CD, so why not just burn all the boot images you might need onto CD? Or if you just have to have a read-write bootable device, get a USB floppy. (You'll probably have to buy one from the manufacturer of your laptop to get one that's bootable.) It's old-fashioned, and it isn't good for any serious data transfer, but it's very reliable. And you need reliable.
The second problem is data transfer. Now, the main merit of a USB key is portability. But if your data is already on a laptop, you already have portability. If you want to transfer data between your laptop and another system, why spend a lot of money on a USB key, which requires multiple steps to accomplish the transfer? It's faster and cheaper just to connect the two USB ports directly.
Chances are you won't be able to boot off of USB much less SD. My Toshiba Libretto L5 has a SD card slot built-in and sure can't boot off of it, but I do have the ability to boot from PCMCIA CD-ROM drives, USB CD-ROM drives, USB Floppy Drives, and even PCMCIA drives (supposedly). Furthermore, SD support is practically nonexistent in Linux. Good luck trying to get your SD card reader to work with Linux much less boot. You'll be somewhat luckier with MMC, but it's still not worth trying. The only good alternative I can offer is an external FireWire or USB drive. I use my iPod to boot various Macs into a clean Jaguar environment for development and testing. I haven't had a chance to try this with PCs, though.
They're more expensive because they don't make or sell as many of them. Economies of scale and all that.
First, fuck "Secure Digital" media. All that means is that it is DRM-enabled.
I got a USB flash drive that is also an MP3 player. It needs no drivers. It's not fancy in any way, but it's pretty cool and less than a hundred bucks for 128mb. It's the "Apacer Audio Steno."
Comparing SD & MMC, you might want to consider that an SD card has a write protect switch which MMC & CF do not (but I expect I'll be corrected on that), and is much faster than MMC (up to 10Mbps vs 300kbs or 1Mbps). Ignore MMC.
If you go with CF, a useful real-world speed comparison is at Rob Galbraith's site.
SD, MMC
Slightly off topic, but having just bought a USB keychain (AVB Mobile Drive 128mb version, in the $35-40 range), I was looking for a Linux distro to put on it. Is it possible to boot linux off one of these? I would assume you have to format it. How would you get the boot code on it? Or would it be possible to just use Loadlin with a kernel on the regular Fat16 partition with perhaps a UMSDOS directory?
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
If you are so keen to have physically small storage
media that you can't tolerate a micro-CD, then SD is
probably too bg for you too. I commend smart media
flash cards. They don't threaten you with potentially
crippling DRM bits, and they are cheaper than MMC
or CF (or at least, the last time I looked, the best sale
prices were on Smart Media cards).
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
If you're interested in trying to get Linux running off a USB flash device, have a look at Puppy Linux.
I'm still not convinced that their move from WindowLab to FVWM95 as the default window manager was that clever though. Have they not seen the size of that thing?
with 256mb. It is sub $100 in price and works great.
/s the disk and make a bootable USB with any OS you want on it. (Lexar swears up and down that it is not bootable though.)
Even better, many systems detect it when booting to DOS even though it isn't the boot device, which allows you to format
I've installed Win98 on it as well. Works like a champ!
I own a Lexar JumpDrive and love it. Mine is the older 128M, USB 1.1 version, but they now have the 1G, USB 2.0 version now as well. It's stylish and compact, plus you don't need any additional hardware to read from it, just plug it in the port. I love mine. I don't use my Iomega Zip drive at all anymore. I've not had any experience trying to boot off of USB as my BIOS doesn't support it, but Linux sees the drive itself and it works terrific. I'd imagine that if you can find a BIOS that boots USB, the 1G version would be perfect for carrying around a portable version of linux.
I'd also consider an XDrive II - it's a multiformat digital media reader that also can accept a hard drive. It comes in USB2.0 various flavors. (Bare or with internal HD)
I use the XDrive II in my daily routine. You don't have to have a computer to offload digital media onto the internal hard drive as their is a copy button on the drive with a little LCD indicating status.
IF you have to wait for a thumb drive -- a 1 gig + SD/MMC/XD reader of the Lexar Pro+ Jumpdrive is due out early next year. Also SD is being promised at 1 gig about that time and XD is promised to be 3 gig by the end of 2004. So if you don't like the XDrive suggestion, wait for this drive.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Most newer motherboard will support USB device bootup, but not all devices will work. Both USB flash drives we reviewed didn't. A CF card with a reader is the way to go, imo. Blatent site spam, but you can look here: http://www.viperlair.com/reviews/mem_store.shtml
Or use a Zaurus, which does not honor the SD DRM components, and sees SD as regular MMC. SD also has the benefit of being faster than MMC, having a 7bit transfer mode instead of 4.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
For the dongle drives, you have to consider the following: A lot of them 'support' USB 2.0 but only work at USB 1.1 speeds. If the drive reads and writes in the range of 4-6 megaBYTES/s then it is a true USB 2.0 drive. My Lexar Jumpdrive 2.0 Pro 256 MB is true USB 2.0. I love this tiny thing and I would definitely buy one again. But it is annoying to crawl around to the back of my desktop and plug it in.
Of course the downside with dongle drives is you can't upgrade them. You could get yourself something like a JumpDrive Trio into which you can install and swap MMC cards, Secure Digital cards and Sony Memory Sticks. This gives you dongle functionality and size upgradeability. Honestly I don't like fumbling around with little flash cards so I did not buy one of these.
A downside to both of these things is that for win98 machines you need a special driver installed (that won't fit on one floppy) to access the drive. But otherwise they are plug'n'play compatible over WinME, Win2k, XP, MacOS X and maybe Linux, I have not tried it.
And no, I don't work for Lexar Media.
Why not get an iPod or some other MP3 player that supports mass storage? If size is an issue, look into something like iRiver's IFP series or Digitalway MPIO devices. They're flash-based and will allow you to listen to music, record voice memos and transfer your files.
I just got a GeIL (geilusa.com) 256MB USB2.0 (compatible with 1.1) flash drive, after filling 2 64MB Lexars (both USB1.1). It's durable aluminum construction (these things work until physically damaged) & can send & receive email (storing it in the flash drive) from any PC in the world (Windoze only); also password & secret zip. Nice leather case also. It's skinnier than many USB flash drives (most oval shaped are too fat to fit into some places without extension cable), and it's about as fast as booting from a 32X CD-rom drive (if boot speed is an issue).
The good price point now with USB flash drives is 128-512MB. Just get a 256 or 512 and worry about the more complex issues later. Floppies have a tiny storage capacity, fragile, & very slow transfer rates (my USB1.1 Lexars are 27X faster reading, 80 times faster writing). For booting, CD-R is ideal; Knoppix is the best example. Just keep those few bootable CD operating systems on CD-R. At 30 cents/CD, it's cheaper than a stamp.
The USB1.1 flash drives have a transfer rate of almost 1MB/sec. The USB2.0 drives transfer at 4-5MB/sec (not the max 60 MB/sec of the USB2.0 spec) and only $10 more. They have no moving parts, no battery, quiet, nothing to wear out (or fall out), & better than Post-Its or floppies. As for CompactFlash, SD and MMC: deal with that later; and you can always get a 6-in-1 card reader/writer.
You'll love the USB flash drive as a cheap, tiny, high capacity storage device for keeping data with you at all times, and exchanging & printing wherever convenient. As for "I could have a number of cards ready to go, such as a linux card, a Win98 card, maybe even a Win2k card", just get a separate USB flash drive for each, or save lots of $ and use CDs. Even if you never boot from the USB drive, you'll love it. If you're not sure, get a cheap USB1.1 stick, like the 128MB Intelligent Stick (I-Stick) made by PQI ($30 via PriceGrabber). It's also the tiniest one there is--you can put it in your wallet (& cheaper than a portable floppy drive).
Defragging does help the flash drives: not for speed, but they can fill up before they're technically full. After defrag you can add more files.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -MIT Ling
Yeah, I've got an Apacer Audio Steno I got for $88 shipped. It's not fancy, but it does what I need quite well. Even does recording with semi-resonable quality considering how small it is. I did record a concert with it and somehow obliterate the files before I could download them though, but it was the first day I had it so I'll chalk that one up to inexperience not a defect.
And it has no "DRM" crapola or any restriction on files being put on or off, so far it's great!
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I believe it has already been pointed out, but the PQI Intelligent Stick is the smallest usb flash drive on the market, and is only about $35 for 128mb. I think the website is www.istick.biz