flash drives

Anybody else notice how quickly the price of USB flash drives is
falling? NewEgg has some very cheap.

My BIOS has flash drive settings HDD and floppy. What's the
difference?

I've read comments about making a windows XP bootable media out of a
2 GB flash drive, for what it's worth.

They seem a little slow. I have a 256 MB Kingston DataTraveler II
(the cap is flimsy). Seems like a good option for important files
backup. Less hassle than a CD but removable.

The USB connector part seems to be the weak link if you need
ruggedness.

"John Doe" wrote in message
...
Anybody else notice how quickly the price of USB flash drives is
falling? NewEgg has some very cheap.

My BIOS has flash drive settings HDD and floppy. What's the
difference?



Never seen that before. But, it would affect what drive letter a flash
drive shows up as. Theoretically, setting this to floppy would make a flash
drive show up as drive B:, whereas choosing HDD would make the flash drive
show up as F:, or something higher than C:

"John Doe" wrote in message
...
Anybody else notice how quickly the price of USB flash drives is
falling? NewEgg has some very cheap.

Yep. If this rate continues, it won't take very many years to make it
compareable to HDD storage.\

My BIOS has flash drive settings HDD and floppy. What's the
difference?

I think it has to do with whether it acts as a HDD or a floppy drive, like
booting a thumb drive with bios etc.


I've read comments about making a windows XP bootable media out of a
2 GB flash drive, for what it's worth.

I have made a thumbdrive bootable and put Partition Magic on it for
pre-partitioning a system before OS install. Works fine. I guess a large
capacity drive would hold Linux, but I think you need more than 2g to boot
XP.

They seem a little slow. I have a 256 MB Kingston DataTraveler II
(the cap is flimsy). Seems like a good option for important files
backup. Less hassle than a CD but removable.

I have found them comparable with a CD as far as speed goes. I have pretty
much done away with using my floppy drive, but still need it for XP install
(F6 option) so I still install the floppy drive. Although in the last two
builds my bios' have supported booting from USB, XP still won't look for it
at the F6 prompt...:-(.


The USB connector part seems to be the weak link if you need
ruggedness.

I always carry a thumb drive around when I am doing repairs with diagnostic
tools on it. I find it actually more durable than floppies or CDs/DVDs. I
have a couple of 2g micro-drives that I wouldn't want to bang around much,
but I really have never had problems with them when using them in cameras
banging around on ATVs in remote areas. They are probably more durable than
I want to think they are.

Ed

On Mon, 10 Apr 2006 10:37:23 +0000, John Doe wrote:

Anybody else notice how quickly the price of USB flash drives is
falling? NewEgg has some very cheap.

My BIOS has flash drive settings HDD and floppy. What's the
difference?

I've read comments about making a windows XP bootable media out of a
2 GB flash drive, for what it's worth.

They seem a little slow. I have a 256 MB Kingston DataTraveler II
(the cap is flimsy). Seems like a good option for important files
backup. Less hassle than a CD but removable.

The USB connector part seems to be the weak link if you need
ruggedness.

Can't live without them. Perfect for file backups and temporary storage.
Beats the hell out of any other portable storage device.

--
__________________________________________________ __________
Kubuntu, try it and Windows will be a thing of the past.
(Ubuntu is a humanist ideology from Sub-Saharan Africa)

H. Seldon

I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
There's a knob called "Brightness" but it doesn't work.

"John Doe" wrote in message
...
Anybody else notice how quickly the price of USB flash drives is
falling? NewEgg has some very cheap.

My BIOS has flash drive settings HDD and floppy. What's the
difference?

I've read comments about making a windows XP bootable media out of a
2 GB flash drive, for what it's worth.

They seem a little slow. I have a 256 MB Kingston DataTraveler II
(the cap is flimsy). Seems like a good option for important files
backup. Less hassle than a CD but removable.

The USB connector part seems to be the weak link if you need
ruggedness.

Have a look at the Corsair ones - up to 4GB and *fast* (for flash
drives) - 19MB/s read and 13MB/sec write speed.
HTH
--
Rob