Weekend and USB Memory sticks

[giza]

Since my head issues cleared up on Friday night, I ended up having a pretty good weekend. I did lots of laundry, paid my bills for the month, and entertained omnibahumut on Saturday evening with episodes of House M.D. and the first season of Drawn Together. I am not sure if he has fully recovered from the latter, though. ;-)

And the weather here. It. Kicked. Ass. It was about 30 with a light wind and quite sunny.


Now, on the subject of USB memory sticks, I'm thinking of getting one. It'd make it easy for me to carry files around without having to burn a CD every time I want to do so. Since I have never bought a memory stick before, does anyone have any suggestions? Specifically stuff along the lines of:

• Companies to buy from/avoid?
  
• Any "gotchas" regarding the technology that I should be aware of?
  
• Any "sweet spots" regarding the price/capacity curve?
  

I haven't decided on a size. I think anywhere between 256 Megs and a Gig should suit my needs. Pointers to FAQs are also welcome. Thanks!

Comments

[omnibahumut.livejournal.com]

SanDisk. The 256USB I have now is mostly sufficiant, although at times I wish I had a 512 or greater. I had a partial loss with it a couple of months ago, but I think that was caused by a problem with a mac laptop I was borrowing from the school. All in all though I have no complaints

[giza.livejournal.com]

That's right, blame the Mac! ;-)

(Though seriously, I wouldn't be surprsied if OS/X maybe wrote some extra files for desktop preferences or something)

[zealianbadass.livejournal.com]

my little 128 PNY Attaché has served me nicely through all manner of awful almost-damage (it now comes out of its casing since the glue failed^^; )

Depending on if you want to have multiples, I believe I've seen a pack of 5 128s in the neighborhood of 70 bucks, but I can't vouch for their worthiness.

I wouldn't go much past a 256, or maybe a 512, but that's because I put mine through the proverbial wringer; and it'd suck to have a hundred bucks + data go -crack- and die at random.

USB Thingies

[awolf.livejournal.com]

I have always worried about the durability of USB sticks, but friends tell me they work fine with losses being extremely rare.

My biggest concern would be something silly like losing the cap, so I'd prefer one designed as a single unit. I don't know if there are performance issues associated with particular brands or not.

Oh...when you use them you have to tell the computer to stop communicating with them before you remove them, or else they can lose data or something. You probably know that, but that's the only trick I know. I'm pretty behind the times; I still need a laptop. Last quarter everyone in my workgroup had one but me, heh.

Trickster

Re: USB Thingies

[giza.livejournal.com]

I intend on using them to transfer data. Like, if I want to take some AMVs with me when I visit a friend or something.

Need a laptop? Get an iBook (http://www.apple.com/ibook/)! :-)

Re: USB Thingies

[awolf.livejournal.com]

I've been tempted. I'm experienced in Windows enough already, and learning Unix/vim/etc daily. I'd like to be more Mac-competent, and an iBook makes sense--if it would be easy to load programs back and forth from my XP machine, which I imagine it is these days.

The biggest complaint I have with Macs is the interface not maximizing windows appropriately. The main reason I maximize is to prevent accidental process-switching with the mouse, not for visual reasons. MacOS doesn't seem to understand that. I have a few similar issues with FireFox and the "tabs" vs. separate windows (I toggle between FF and IE a lot).

I just read about your symptoms--sounds rough; you're in my thoughts. My Dad has had migraines most of his life, and they're not fun. I'm relieved that none of the probable diagnoses you were given were cancer or dementia, though.

Trickster

Re: USB Thingies

[giza.livejournal.com]

I don't follow you about windows not being maximized. Can you elaborate?

You can use Safari if you don't like FireFox. By default, it does not do tabbing.

Re: USB Thingies

[awolf.livejournal.com]

My understanding is when you maximize a Mac window, it fills *most* of the screen, leaving spaces around the edges where, if you accidentally click, you might switch to a background window. I prefer a maximized window to claim the entire desktop so I'm not distracted by background stuff. I like some of the graphical window switching they do, though.

I'll probably go all FireFox eventually, I'm just reluctant to change yet. :) It's currently my default but I still usually use IE, and the bookmarks in one don't update in the other unless I import, which seems silly that they can't use the same system folders. Probably MS' fault.

Trickster

Re: USB Thingies

[furahi.livejournal.com]

Well, the "problem" with bookmarks is IE uses a folder with lots of little "url" files, whereas Firefox (Mozilla and Netscape) use a single HTML (xml?) file called "Bookmarks.html". Even if they were in the same system folder, neither would make sense for the other (well, you can open the bookmarks.html file in IE, and it lists all the bookmarks, but not add them to your favorites directly).
A solution is storing your favorites/bookmarks elsewhere. I use "Bookmarks synchronizer", a Firefox plugin that uploads my bookmarks to a webdav (it can do FTP too) server for me to keep them in sync between computers and OS'es
That plugin doesn't exist for IE, but I read in a forum there's a plugin for IE that does the same and /is/ compatible with Bookmarks synchronizer.

Re: USB Thingies

[giza.livejournal.com]

> My understanding is when you maximize a Mac window, it fills *most* of the screen,

That may be application-specific, but I just tried it with Terminal in OS/X 10.4 (Tiger), and it takes up the entire screen like you'd expect.

> which seems silly that they can't use the same system folders.

I'd like to point out (which you probably already know :-) that the world does not revolve around Microsoft. FireFox exists for at least two other architectures, namely OS/X and Linux. So it needs to use a bookmarking scheme that will also work on those platforms. And that is one of the beauties of FireFox. I've used it on all 3 platforms, and it's basically the same experience.

I've also transferred bookmark files between all 3 platforms without incident. (through a module (https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=14&application=firefox) that uploads your bookmark file to an FTP server and can be used to retrieve it on different machines. It's pretty hot)

[zeeth_kyrah]

I have a thumbdrive-sized USB card reader which accepts SD, XD, and MMC cards. I also have a pair of SD cards (32 and 128MB). Haven't had any problems aside from the cramped layout of sockets at the back of my computer cases (easily solved with front-mounted USB or a male/female USB-A cable).

[giza.livejournal.com]

That's one of the things I like about my iMac. The Apple Keyboard that came with it is USB and has two extra USB sockets right on the keyboard. :-)

[yasha-taur.livejournal.com]

> The Apple Keyboard that came with it is USB and has two extra USB sockets right on the keyboard. :-)

You have to be somewhat cautious about this. The USB on the Mac keyboard is 'low power', and may not have enough juice to power some USB-Flash drives. Some may work, some may not.

I have used several brands of USB-Flash drives on my Mac, and have helped others with them at work. They all seem to work, unless they have some special feature (like security) that needs drivers installed. The main caution I would have you take is that be sure that the icon is off the desktop and any 'activity' light on the drive has stopped flashing before you remove the drive. You would be amazed at how many people try to rush this, and end up losing data.

They always come formatted as DOS format, but if you are only going to use it for Mac to Mac transfer, you can reformat it as a Mac format drive. Just remember this so that you won't try to use it in a PC.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out. I'll keep the low power issue in mind.

[electropaw.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you brought this up...I was thinking about getting a USB thumb drive for myself. Just recently I had to transfer a file over to another computer, but I didn't have a thumb drive. However, both machines had CompactFlash readers on em, so I used an old 32MB CF card to get er done.

Secure drives

[tosdragon.livejournal.com]

Be careful of the drives that purport to be secure flash drives. The way the frequently operate is by installing an on-board driver that is in the memory of the stick to the hard disk on WIndows computers. Yeah, it does not cause problems on the Mac end, but if you put it in to a Windows machine, frequently they will want to install a driver before XP will deal with it. I would shy away from anything that advertises 'security' on the flash drive label as a result. Now, SanDisk makes a decently priced little bugger. No complaints about them with the mess of them that we use at the school really.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

I would suggest looking at some reviews. here's the conclusion (http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2549&p=28) to one roundup, and it's only 4 months old, so it should still be reasonably accurate.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

(just remeber to confirm with other reviews, e.g. at Amazon - the Lexar JumpDrive seems to have great performance, but poor build quality)

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

I've been very happy with my Jumbo Drive. It's a bit bigger than a memory stick, but the size and the price are hard to beat.

SanDisk Cruzer Micro

[blackfeather.livejournal.com]

Is a nice unit, quite small and 'stylish'. But don't use the lanyard, the cap will fall off while wearing the unit. They are 'skinned', by which they mean they have three interchangable plastic covers -- red, blue and clear. I won't wear it on the lanyard anymore.

As for buying a unit, check the sunday paper supplements from Staples, Office Depot, Circuit City, Best Buy, CompUSA, etc. They often have sales even better than online discounters.

[lionman.livejournal.com]

Since you're a MacGuy, you might consider getting a FireWire thumb-drive. KanaGuru makes them. If you wanted, you could make it a bootable OS X device. :-)

[nemetfox.livejournal.com]

Most of the memory chips inside all of these things are made by one or two companies anyway.
Just get yourself a decent mid-range (pricewise) of the size you want, and you should be fine.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

The memory chips might be roughly equivalent, but there appears to be a wide variation in the quality of the controller, especially for writing (http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2549&p=26). For large files it can mean the difference between having the file read or written in ten seconds or in a minute. Whether this actually matters depends on usage, but I like everything to be instant. *grin*

[elfasi.livejournal.com]

I don't know why everyone's suggesting such tiny sizes here, 128Mb and 256Mb are practically free with cereal packets these days, they're so tiny and worthless. Even 512Mb is hardly worth having, a 1Gb USB memory stick is the sweet spot. I could recommend Viking and PNY, looking at my favourite retailer here in the UK, they sell a 1Gb stick for less than a PC game would cost you. You can fit a CD on, or any number of service packs, software updates, whatever, and USB sticks are pretty reliable.

[fc-greyfox.livejournal.com]

Look for a SimpleTech USB Drive. They produce the devices and sell to some of the major names, so prices tend to be lower and just as reliable. (The Apple-certified techs out here use them all the time!) 512Mbs are fairly cheap these days, if you need that much. If not, there's little difference in price from 128s and 256s. One thing to remember on them: USB drives tend to have a limited number of write cycles, so don't use a giant drive for 1 or 2 tiny files that are changed constantly, or you'll be sorry in a few years. Just like regular drives, they do have varying speeds for read/write as well.. but writing tends to be far slower on the lower-priced models.

[vesuvius.livejournal.com]

Just be careful you don't bump them too much when you have them in. I've broken the plug off of 2 of those stick drives.

Dual Use.

[megadog.livejournal.com]

My approach was to buy a Gigabyte CompactFlash card off Kingston then carry a little CF-to-USB converter. The only reason for me doing this is that my digital camera uses CF cards so I can use the same media in both the camera and for porting data between computers.

[ryvex.livejournal.com]

Size of memory? Depends on how much $ you wanna dump on it.

Far more importatant is PHYSICAL SIZE! I have a wonderful 256 unit that's the size of an egg. And it WILL NOT FIT ON MY iBOOK'S USB PORTS UNLESS I REMOVE ALL NEARBY CONNECTIONS! so annoying. I say buy the one that's as small as possible. As far as caps, get one of the ones that spins.

[ryvex.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and the USB ports on my keyboard don't have enough power to run a USB drive... :(