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Flash Drive Roundup
Braedley writes "When [Ars] last took an in-depth look at USB flash drives in 2005, the landscape was a bit different. A 2GB drive ran nearly $200, and speeds were quite a bit slower then. At the time, we noted that while the then-current crop of drives was pretty fast, they still were not close to saturating the bandwidth of USB2. To top it off, a good drive was still going to set you back $50 or $70--not exactly a cheap proposition. Since our first roundup, this picture has changed considerably, and it leads to a question: has the flash drive become an undifferentiated commodity, just like any other cheap plastic tsotschke that you might find at an office supply store checkout counter?"
Frosted Mini Wheats -- collect nine (!) proof of purchases and get a Star Trek flash drive.
No joke. 1 GB, pre-loaded with Trek content, recommended for ages 8 and up.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I don't know if all this is necessary, I washed and dried my flash drives couple of times and they still work fine.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
As an amateur diver, I do NOT recommend gluing your O-ring. These things lose their suppleness and crack, rendering them ineffective.
Make sure the groove is very smooth to prevent nicking the ring, insert the o-ring in it and lube the ring once in a while (once a year should be more than enough) with silicone grease.
As for Epoxy: it should do the job in a pinch, but I would recommend looking at some silicone gelly like Olympus uses for it's Tough cameras. More flexibility = less cracking = less possibility of water seeping to the board. Most USB keys get flexed often in pockets, etc.
Hey, I know it's overkill for a 10$ trinket, but if you gotta do it, you gotta do it in style.
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
True. But for those who still have machines running '98, there is a little known generic mass storage driver for '98 that allows use of newer drives that do not come with '98 support.
I have a tower still running 98SE that I installed this driver onto. It'll take any flash drive I shove into it, that whore :D.
---PCJ
So, how are they like floppies?
They can be read and written directly from applications (in the same way as a hard drive or network driver) on the majority of pcs without needing any additonal software or hardware and they are small enough to easilly carry arround.
That combination of features is IMO what has allowed USB sticks to replace floppies where everything else failed to do so.
The superfloppies (zip, LS120, HIFD etc) remained niche products because of reliability issues and the fact that none of them could never get the drives widespread enough (yeah you could cart arround the drive and a CD of drivers for the drive but that kinda reduced the portability). CD-RW got the hardware widely distributed but unfortunately burner manufacturers stopped shipping directcd and in doing so largely killed off "packet writing".
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register