Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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?"

2 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