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Best USB Flash Storage?

Posted by Cliff on from the portable-bootable-and- >3-meg-capacity dept.

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?"

7 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Other alternatives by tchuladdiass · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Other alternatives by (trb001) · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The problem with CDRW is that when you take the discs to other computers, writing on them requires a CDRW drive. I thought about this too, I use the tiny (220Mb?) CDs to carry stuff to work since they fit in my shirt pocket, but I can't transfer anything from work to home because of no burner at work.

      Ideally, I would like to find a USB type drive that's cheap, then buy two of them...one for work, one for home. Any suggestions here?

      --trb

  2. Password Protection? by retostamm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  3. Some experience by Kris_J · · Score: 2, Interesting
    For up, I have a review of a very nice USB flash RAM device here. It's particularly good because it doesn't have any extra features that require drivers in, say, Windows XP. I have not booted off of it though.

    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.

  4. Re:Use CompactFlash! by mercuryresearch · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's called wear leveling, and yes, the other CF suppliers have it too.

    It does reduce wearout, but you should really put any frequently updated and not too important files on a ramdisk.

    With my CF based machines, I just did a standard (but minimal) slackware install and then used "find" to locate any files that got touched after leaving the system on for a day. A startup script copies those files into a ramdisk and symlinks them back into the directory tree -- so I got a standard linux install with now wearout worries.

    Anyway, I agree -- CF is the way to go here.

  5. No SD, usb+mp3 is neat by Tom7 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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."

  6. Lexar Pro 2.0 USB by Lester67 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    with 256mb. It is sub $100 in price and works great.

    Even better, many systems detect it when booting to DOS even though it isn't the boot device, which allows you to format /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.)

    I've installed Win98 on it as well. Works like a champ!