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What's on Your USB Pen Drive?
gmhowell asks: "With the popularity of USB pen drives, I've thought it time to join the crowd and get one. But I'm curious as to what is so important that you should always have a copy. Clearly PuTTY or your favorite SSH client is important. Perhaps with some keys. But what else? A copy of your browser cookies? MP3s? Pictures? What other software is smart enough to run from a portable medium without need for an installation? (Yup, MAME and z26 seem like likely candidates)."
LINUX!
Has anyone found a decent Linux distribution, which fits in 32 Mb (i.e. any smartdisk)? By decent I mean, a desktop distro, with say KDE or Gnome, and all your basic tools. It also would be useful if it could boot directly from windoze or DOS (loadlin?) as well as boot from the smartdisk (is this possible?).
I know there's knoppix out there, but you need to repackage it. Has anyone done this (and keeps the distro up to date?)
My Stack Overflow user
Are on mine: Damnation and a Day Album.
And a few PGP keys.
Nice.
--
FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
Well, if I had one, it'd be more for "I need to get data from here to there" than for "I need to store data in my pocket." Right now I have little 2.5" CD-RWs I use for getting drivers etc around the office. This'd be faster I think.
"Derp de derp."
These things are porn stashs for married men.
"Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
You can actually BOOT linux from windows... LOADLIN.EXE does that... I'm not a troll, get your facts straight, sweetie! ;-)
My Stack Overflow user
DOS == Windows... that's what i meant... that's all!
My Stack Overflow user
My entire UNIX account from school, including all my read mail and web pages, is backed up on my USB drive. I store anything I think I might need to work on just in case I don't have internet access.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
i used to have a cygwin install on my keychain, but it requires some registry crap in windows to work properly.
rather than clutter up the registry of every windows computer i'll ever use (joke here), i use unxutils, which has a great command line interface. along with cli gpg and my ssh keys, my usb keychain is of great use to me when i'm away from my powerbook.
I used to use Password Safe at work so that I could have randomized passwords and a system to retrieve them from, but it was very inconvenient because I wouldn't have the changes I made at home.
I now store my password safe database on my pen drive and just plug it into a USB slot when I need it--since I'm one of those geeks with a keychain equivalent to George's Wallet (Seinfeld)--it's always with me wherever I am.
I also store various utilities that I use from day-to-day, and made it bootable so that I can boot from it on ailing workstations when I need to.
"God is dead!" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead!" - God
mail client
Best Windows Freeware
I'm a college student, so I'd probably keep a few small games on there to bide the time in computer labs, copies of papers and programs I had to write in case I forgot the hardcopy and needed to print it out again, and probably some PGP keys and a favorites list.
My favorite tracks on the pen drive and the rest in the 2.5" portable hard drive chassis. I can sit at any desk or be at my laptop and still have my tunes without network admins getting mad at me!
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
> A copy of your browser cookies?
Cookies? Please. Try _bookmarks_. Definitely.
One's preferred text editor. Compression tools (zip, bzip2, etc.).
Perhaps some critical files for 'off-site' backups: your resume, a copy of your network settings, your address book, etc. The garbage file you snagged from that Gibson.
A network tool or tool(s), a virus scanner. Disk partitioning tools (PartitionMagic if you're a Windows user). A copy of your favourite games (BZFlag, GLTron).
Make this thing bootable, too, just in case, as some machines can boot off these things now. Yay!
nuff said.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
For limited time Dell Home Systems has Dell 128 MB USB drive for $31.95. Click the link for additional 10% off and no sales tax (sorry, TX people).
I love it - I bought a 128MB and it is just about perfect. I carry it around like a pocket knife :)
I got my dad to buy one to backup his files while hes on the road. And I just had to have one after setting his up for him and such. If you DONT have one - go get one, really...
Duke
FreeBSD: Nothing runs like a daemon with a pitch fork.
while my 'net connection has been down, i've been using it exclusively to move data back and forth between my work computer and my home machine.
:)
works well that way.
but i made a mistake and lost 8MB of my 32MB key to a bad tool. anyone know of a way to repartition my key to reclaim all 32MB? (my options are open.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Yes, you could accually fit Knopix on one of these AND have room for file storage.
I keep putty on my pendrive, as well as psftp. I also keep a backup of my Mozilla bookmarks. Other than that, I use it to move data around.
The stuff I work on (texts, source code, ...) checked out from my CVS repository. CVS lets me sync changes between the files on my USB memory and the various computers I use. Pretty nice side-effect of a version control tool.
I also reserve about 30MB for a FAT partition; file transfers between work and my connectionless old HP Vectra.
i am in school, and so all my documents, reports and c++/java projects are on there.
I also have copies of my favorite software, aim 4.8 + aim+ (5.x doesn't play with aim+ well), the distributed.net client, putty, tightvnc, winamp, etc.
and thirdly, i carry a copy of my website, in case i need it, or other backup medians are not available.
Here's what I store on mine.
1. Important documents. Mostly my poetry and fiction writing.
2. Funny little pictures I find on the net. I might want to show them to someone.
3. My irc software (mirc, in this case)
4. My Firebird and Thunderbird profiles. Finally, roaming profiles!
5. Copies of Firebird and Thunderbird. (so if I'm on a dialup computer, it doesn't take me very long to get up and running.
6. Backups of important files from both home and work. Just in case I lose the original, or need that file.
Very useful things, for the roaming profile alone.
yahoo hase some nice pen drives for sale.
Of course then the cover (the plastic part with the hole that you use to put it on a keyring, which probably costs about 40 cents wholesale) broke and now I can't even find the damn thing.
- adam
First, I format the key fat16, so it can be read by the most operating systems.
It has:
* a bootable DOS partition and a number of DOS tools for disks, etc. It doesn't boot with many BIOS'es, but it does for some.
* I have a couple of floppy disk images and floppy disk tools.
* I keep PGP installers for a variety of operating systems.
* I have a small PGP disk that I have a current copy of my contacts, and some other private files.
I use IMAP now for email, so I don't need to store email on it, but I have in the past and it works with both Outlook and Outlook Express if you know a couple of tricks.
-- Herder of Cats
personally i think tossing the win32 build of firebird on there would be pretty sweet. IIRC, firebird on windows is distributed as a .tgz (or .zip, whatever) with a binary that you can execute right out of the directory. no installer required.
ID-10-T is a way of life
Personal: papers and documents going back to 1988, books im reading, picutres of friends, family, neekid strangers, my internet links, resumes,documents, interesitng web pages, i use it as my main storagefor personal stuff, and back it up often.
Work: Its fantastic for transferring/working with hughe documents and mailing lists the you dont want to put up on the network, also its fantastic for transferring peoples slightly outsized power point presentations and whatnot from their laptops, to the computer of the person theyre workig with, especially when its a personal laptop with no way of connecting to the netowrk.
Essentially, i use it for anything that wont fit on a floppy, or anything i want to have with me on a moments notice. I think theyre the greatist thing since sliced bread.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
It would be nice if someone made an app or a software suite that fit on one of these which would handle things like ssh, vpn, pgp, and other such things, without the need for the windows registry or dependence upon unix libraries.
Even better would be something cross platform, like have a perl interpreter for linux and another for windows and write the whole thing in perl.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I would still re-think the position on USB drives. Having one stowed away in your front pocket might produce the impression desired.
On my usb pen drive, I've got...
Around 2 inches of dust.
puTTY, drivers, winzip, and more drivers
If you've got a key you tend to use from only one place (i.e. work->home), consider prefixing the authorized_hosts line with a from="some.hostname.com" as well. This will prevent the key being used from a different IP by someone who "borrows" your keychain.
Puppy linux fits in 48MB w/ a X windows interface and office software
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/
Mesh-AP fits in 32MB and incorporates an ad-hoc WiFi mesh and an Opera browser
http://www.locustworld.com/
Trinux fits in a floppy with heavy duty security functions
http://www.trinux.org/
While we're on the subject, anyone have brand recommendations for a good cheap USB drive (HD or flash is fine). Preferably cheap, it doesn't have to be big at all. I just need it for putty and a few scripts.
Or are they all pretty much the same?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Just a few lines of shell script and a cron job at each end, and you can populate your keychain with 32, 64, however many megs of files at a go every night and drop them off at work in the morning. If you're the kind who plugs your keychain into your system at work and home already, the copy process can be completely transparent.
I set up my scripts late last year. With a tiny little $35 32 meg keychain, I've already transported over 5 gigs without ever once having to wait or think about the process. Get a bigger keychain, and you could go many times faster.
So, here's what my pendrive looks like after 10 months of use:
/docs - all my personal docs (bookmarks, resume, will, keyfiles, etc)
:(
/docs directory in case I'm on a foreign box.
/proj - source checkouts for personal projects under active development. Dedicated Eclipse workbench and tailored shortcut for launching eclipse. This lets me have one ide for java, python, documentation, websites, xml/xsl, etc.
/xfer - file transfer/holding area for moving stuff between locations/systems
/linux - aliases, scripts, must have utils
/win32 - gvim, dedicated profiles for thunderbird and firebird. Installs (but not installed) for putty, winzip, firebird (instant browser!)
Note, Putty is registry dependent, and the workaround for using it on a pen drive is too painful for everyday use. I love Putty, but it doesn't live on my pen drive. I wish it would
Having firebird and thunderbird profiles on the pen drive means that I can have firebird/tbird installs live on work/home/laptop machines but always keep my data off the boxes and in my hands. I keep my bookmarks in my
Other than stuff already mentioned, I have my Knoppix homedir in a compressed file on my USB drive. I boot the Knoppix CD with the USB drive installed and the argument:
knoppix=/dev/sda1/knoppix.img
and my desktop is set up.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
I'd love to be able to mount my home directory on a pen drive, that way I automatically have everything I need, and can login to the same setup on the various Debian boxes I use.
Probably not really a feasable use, (version differences in any apps would cause config file hell) but a nice thought.
is on my pen drive. Which I don't have. But if I did. It would be porn.
Now wash your hands.
I'd just like to thank the submitter for mentioning Putty.
I've been using it since I switched to an SSH-only web host last year, and I've always been 'troubled' by the fact that I wouldn't be able to get onto the server from another PC with a standard telnet client.
Being the quick-thinking genius that I am it never occurred to me to just keep a copy of Putty (plus key) on my pen drive! And even typing this, I wonder why I never thought to just put it on a floppy! (Which actually makes more sense, seeing as not all PCs have USB ports.)
Oh man I'm ashamed of how dumb I am.
Seriously, that's a weight off my mind! (What little mind I apparently have.)
... doesn't exist yet. Still looking for a good 256MB / 512MB one. But, if I did:
;)
* Emulators -- ePSXe being the key one. Nothing like being able to pop a PSX into the computer you're at by just finding a USB port. ZSNES (with Dragon Warrior 5 and 6 fantranslations) and a GB/NES emu as well. Not as interested in MAME as ZSNES, as you can fit more SNES games (and they're just about as fun) as Arcade games in the same space.
* Httrack, or at the very least a mirror of my favorite Japanese Manga artist's websites. Takahiro Awatake being the one I can think of off the top of my head.
* Putty, of course.
* Mozilla Firebird and my bookmarks.
* A backup of my website (~5 megs) and drawings (~100 megs). Can never have enough backups.
A 256 or 512 Pen drive would hold a 30 minute Anime episode quite nicely with ample room to spare. So if I was obsessing about some series that week, I'd probably have that on there too, suitably crunched and with the DivX and XviD codecs as well. If not, maybe a shrunken copy of Jungle Wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu Episode 1.
I won a 64mb USB thumbdrive while at the last AZSAGE meeting. I didn't know what I would do with it at first, but it quickly became the most essential part of my keychain. The first thing I put on it was TightVNC and Putty. That alone seemed like it would make the thing pretty handy. Then I went to tinyapps.org and grabbed a ton of useful stuff including...
1) compression tools
2) encryption tools
3) a few graphic tools
4) secure file deletion tools
5) tiny web server
6) tiny ftp server
7) tiny irc server
8) tiny irc client
9) tiny personal firewall
10) hex editor
11) unix commands for DOS
12) misc other stuff
After all that I still had 44mb to work with. I threw all the scripts I'd written, a few priceless pics, a couple mp3s, and I still have 30mb to go.
Choose you future. Choose to sysadmin.
Angband's save files are cross-platform so you can play anywhere. May even give you a chance of finishing it before you die ;)
Advice: on VPS providers
My Windows XP EFS keys (hey, if any of you are using encyrpting file system on Windows, make sure that you export the keys and store them somewhere. Because if you can't get windows to boot for some reason, even if you know your password and have access to the hard drive, there's no supported way to decrypt the files without having previously exported the keys.)
and PGP key.
Small files I'd be really upset to lose, like midi or tablature for a bunch of songs I wrote.
And a whole bunch of MP3s, since my drive is also an MP3 player!
The thing is, anywhere you'd care to use putty, it's probably easier to just download it from the internet, since it's just one file. (Maybe it would be sensible to store some "offline" apps on it, but I don't have any I care for..)
http://www.toms.net/rb/
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I don't really have anything permanent as I generally use it to transport stuff from my PC to my mac (and vice versa) if I'm too lazy to put the network cable in a iron out the weird problems I get.
I would love to be able to store actual stuff and use them at my "educational" institution, but they have limited our access to the machines so much, that I would need to basically manually reinstall windows components and bring my own drivers to get the key to work!
I think it may have been the OS that was gumming things up in my case, but I used my 64MB pen drive to transfer stuff from an old computer (win98) to a newer one (win2k), and the free space kept shrinking even though I deleted the files.
So obviously this is an MS-only tip -- but you can alter your folder options to show hidden/ os-protected files, and all the junk will show up. Just delete it, and you have your space back (no negative side-effects that I noticed).
Alas, that drive was somehow left on a driveway at my parents' house when I was visiting, now that I have it back (via the postal service) it's no longer recognized as a valid USB device. I'm guessing no one will have any tips on how to fix mine?
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
How can you easily mount/unmount a pen drive under GNU/Linux (Red Hat 9, to be more specific)? Ideally, I'd like to pop one in, the system would recognize what filesystem I'm using on it, mount it, and make an icon appear on the desktop so I can use it from the GUI. Later, when I want to remove it from the machine, I'd pick "eject" or somesuch. I can mount and unmount the pen drive by issuing commands as root, but I'd like to do this more conveniently and without root privilege or using the CLI. Thanks for your help.
Digital Citizen
There are dos USB drivers available.
do some googling.
This one is called ComSwiki. It works on Windows and Mac and does not require installation on my company-owned laptop. It runs inside a SmallTalk environment and so is platform-independent. I can also upload files to the pages of the wiki for better organization.
Cheers, Toliaro
See:
- automount
- hotplug architecture
- kde3 has nice option to put new mounted filesystems on desktop as icons, see prefs.
Syslinux will get you far on these 'toys'. I have a couple of them (and they seem to be multiplying). The smaller ones I use as combo 95/98 boot disks and have them booting kernels that will nfs mount root off one of my other boxes. Lets me turn a spare box into a quick linux box or a place to sys a couple new 98 style boot disks. Syslinux is your friend and it *will* work on most of these thumb drives. The hard part in getting these to boot is usually getting your mainboard to actually do it (lots claim they do, but you'll need luck actually making the marketing come true)
What's wrong with you people? You cant use IE even on somebody else's computer? I can understand some specialized tools, but caring around a browser in this day and age is uncalled for. Don't let your hate of MS prevail over common sense.
Trillian can run from portable media (even a CD if you're not interested in changing settings). Gotta modify some ini's to make the paths relative, but it works pretty well.
Somebody even set up a website with step-by-step instructions
Trillian Anywhere
I'm starting to think this isn't the best place to promote my Anti-Sig Campaign.
I haven't gotten myself a USB drive yet, but I used to carry around my bookmarks list on my school work floppy. Quite useful, slightly less so now that Google is around...
dman small is 50 MB. it is a pruned knoppix.
But i am not sure ho to boot it from the pendisk. i didnt manage to boot from my pendrive. (i have a asus p4pe Mobo).
loadlin (or linload?) should be able to boot it from real-mode dos.
Tiger direct has a 256MB pen drive for $50, and one of their 512MB models is only $110. The 1GB drives are still up there.
"All universal moral principles are idle fantasies." -The Marquis de Sade
I was always stuck using floppies. We all know the reliability of floppies sucks. It's even worse after being the bottom of a bookbag with a calculus book that weighs 12 pounds sitting on top of it for a day.
Also, back in my day (and I only finished my undergrad degree in 1998), most people didn't have fast network connections in their residence yet, so I would download large files to my shell account at school and head over with a stack of floppies to copy the files, then head back home and hope that the stars were aligned properly and the wacky SCSI floppy drive on the DEC workstation at school and my cheap junk $10 floppy drive in my Linux machine would jive.
I recently saw a 256 MB Lexan USB 2.0 keychain drive for about $50 locally on sale. If you would've told me ten years ago something like that would be available at your local warehouse club, I would've laughed at you and said "no way!"
These USB memory sticks use FLASH memory. I believe there is a limit to how often you can write data to these chips. I you put an OS on it that does swapping/etc how long will it last?
Can USB flash drives support autorun in windows like a CD-ROM or do they act more like a disk with no autorun feature?
The problem with sticking PuTTY on one of these things is that you have to trust the machine that you use PuTTY on not to be snooping your password. If you have PuTTY + your ssh keys, worse still. (Assuming that your parents/friends/local internet cafe aren't capable of or interested in this sort of thing is a kind of trust. However, you're also assuming they haven't been infected by the latest steal-your-computer-away virus...)
For this sort of thing, you want a widget that will sign data with your ssh keys without ever handing the key over to untrusted hardware, so that you can plug it in and - while your session is still monitorable - at least your authentication tokens aren't up for grabs.
And if anyone knows of such a widget, then please tell me...
Only $35 for 128MB at Googlegear.
thanks, imve been trying to get mine working properly for a couple of weeks. ALways had to mount an unmount manually.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
At work, there's only one network port in my cube. For whatever reason, the network port doesn't like it when a switch/hub is connected to it.
As a result, I have two options for transferring files between my work desktop and my own laptop:
a) Bring the laptop elsewhere to plug it in to the network
b) Use my USB keychain drive
Take a guess which of the above I do most often.
I also use it to provide a Knoppix persistent home directory.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
most usb drives just use a standard partition table with fat32 filesystems
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
I have three computers in my office (one media editing station, one regular computer, and one laptop) and I store all my programming scripts on an USB keychain so when I switch between them I'm always assured that I'm working on the latest versions of my scripts. It seemed a much easier solution than setting up a fileserver, especially with the often-times spotty network access that a wireless access point gives to the laptop.
It cost me about $70 for a 128 meg chip, and that's plenty of space for storing what essentially amounts to copious amounts of text files with perhaps a whole web site or two I'm developing. It's weird though to hold a whole year of work in your hand.
Sometimes I worry about the reliability of these things, they're still fairly new. I make backups to CD occasionally, but still, I'd hate to lose a couple days of work due to a device that got bumped one too many times...
A copy of Mozilla Firebird cause you can't rely on others to have anything except Internet Exploder installed...
Portable system that will go anywhere.
Boot off the knoppix cd and mount the home dir on the usb drive.
This is the way to go, and you can have all the software you should need.
How resilient are these USB keychain/pen drives? I've been thinking of one for quite a while, but I feel like I'm pretty rough on my keys. Tossing them on the table, dropping them, carrying boxes and having the boxes press on the keys, etc. I'd hate to ruin one, and whatever important data that goes on em.
Uses I've thought of include giving hi-res pictures to people on dialup (most of my family), taking Windows updates over to mom's house instead of waiting on her dialup.. Software for work that I currently carry on CD (I do tech support for my school, so stuff like Ad Aware, Symantec AV, blah blah), documents and such for classes.
Basically, I think I'd use one, just afraid that I would ruin it. Maybe I'll just pick up a cheaper / smaller one and see how I do before getting a bigger / more expensive one.
FWIW, don't think I saw it mentioned in this discussion, there's a thread on the Gentoo forums about making a Live keychain based on the Live CD.
I haven't gotten it working yet, because I can't get my Duron 900 & mobo to boot off usb, but Puppy Linux is a great little distro designed to run off flash cards. The files on the dongle are 20 megs, the distro is compressed and uncompresses on boot into 48 megs of memory. The whole thing runs in RAM. google for puppy linux.
Other than that, I have a dd image of the windows 98 boot floppy, some drivers for various computers. I use it a lot when I visit my family and they need stuff setup. A copy of Adaware or Spybot Search and Destroy is good too.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Drive #1 - 8 MB IBM M-Systems DiskOnKey
/home directory. In there is my Perl script, data files, emulators and ROMs that I'm currently working on for an HTPC-type of project (more info can be found at http://dev.tonydanzabonanza.com/tuxstation/ ).
This is basically for Windows only, i.e. only when I'm at work.
In the unencrypted 6 MB section, I've got some basic "stuff" - C / Perl code I'm working on, text files, edna playlists, and a copy of FCE Ultra, just in case it's needed.
In the encrypted 2 MB section (which is accessed with M-System's KeySafe util), I've got a copy of PuTTY + key, TightVNC, and i.FTP, which is a small FTP client that's not too shabby (picked up from TinyApps.org.
Drive #2 - 64 MB Lexar JumpDrive
All that's really on here is my Knoppix
"My days are less enjoyable because of people." ~ Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Does anyone know a way to use a USB key as logon authenticator? It would be cool to automatically login upon USB key insertition.
Are there any generic USB "Pen Drive" utilities out there?
/s the drives, making them bootable if you system supports it. Since some manufactures include this with the drives, there has to be a way to make it work across all models.)
Such as....
Is there a program that will encrypt or password protect directories? (Some manufacturers include this software, some don't.)
Is there a utility to let you clone the drives from within Windows? (GHOST 6 can clone them, but only under DOS).
How about a generic utility that lets you add a boot sector? (Every USB pen drive I have encountered so far is bootable, as long as you have a system that will see it when you boot to a MS/PC-DOS environment. 6.22 and above can fdisk, and format
(PS: Again, Ghost can clone a bootable image to the drive, but that is a long way to go to make the drive bootable)
Um, I don't keep anything on my pen drive. I try to keep it free so that I can use it as a floppy to move stuff from one computer to another without anything on it to deprive me of space. 128MB seems good enough for moving around anything too small to bother with burning a CD to move it...
It's great, because practically everywhere you find a computer with USB and Win98 or higher, and you can just carry it around with you and use it to save documents you create or whatever.
There are good ideas here, but I often use my 64MB thumb drive just to transfer files from work to home and vice versa - there's never many mainstays on it.
_ __ __
Right now, I have:
- Antivirus software installers and updates (we had a problem at work)
- Some mp3's a guy at work gave me making fun of Steve Ballmer's "Developers Developers Developers!" speech
- A few floppy disk images for various utilities
- Some work spreadsheets I worked on at home
- Two semi-funny short movies
- Two zipped backups of various work projects
_______________________________________________
www.punkwalrus.com - What a world, what a world!
And Nautilus does it automatically.
You got rooked...should have been +1 Funny.
Go to dell.com and enter this number in search:
311-3729
You'll get 1 hit back...that's your item. Sale runs until Monday...yes, it's a Dell sale so you don't need to use the spam link for the discount.
mp3s and video clips -
Knoppix config -- boring, I know. And some web browsing.
- Important Disk images (custom bootdisk, ghost..) :( )
... on a 64mb TwinMOS keychain USB
- Putty, of course.
- A zip file of my php project (i dont work on it anymore
- The installation file of the client to connect on a WindowsXP desktop
- A distributed.net client, even if I dont use it anymore
- Messenger Plus!, and Cronosoft QuickHide Windows (Useful like hell to chat at school)
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
I have several units (64mb-512mb) or a particular brand of USB drives that come with just a filesystem, rather than a partition table on them. I partition them to partially FAT32 and partially Ext3. The Windows 98 drivers that come with the units do not support partitioning.
Is it possible to backport the drivers from WinME? Does a good universal driver exist for usb storage devices?
As a tip to those using Linux and MacOS: OS X w/out EXT2 support will attempt to interpret a single-partition usb storage device as FAT32, causing all kinds of havoc to ensue. I can't remember if the problem is with 10.0 or 10.2. It might have been fixed, but I'm in no mood to test it.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
C64 emulator and couple hondred games what else!
--Matt Fisher
Hmmmn, maybe this is why my computer halts if I try to boot with my pen drive connected (not trying to boot from the pen drive either, so it gets on my nerves a bit)
Oh, and to make sure I don't get modded -1 Offtopic:
I keep music, some pictures, and e-books on my pen drive.
-- It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Try updating your system BIOS. I had the same problem with an older Dell rev on a bootable laptop. BIOS upgrade fixed if (assuming your manufacturer knows it is a problem.)