USB Flash Drives

[mikesed]

Hi,

Forgive me if I am behind the times here!

Just seen a USB Flash Drive and I'm impressed.

I regularly burn CD;s to cart data around and these neat little "toys" look far more competant at dealing with my needs.

However, scanning the internet I see a vast array of prices for the same size memory.

Anyone got any thouhgts on a good drive to buy.

I just want reliable data transfer onto and off the drive. No frills!

Cheers,

Mike

[Mark Snowdon]

usb flash

Mike,

some are usb 1.1 some usb 2.0 - difference = speed

there are various security features/passwords

So many people are selling these I couldnt recommend a brand but at least that is a pointer as to what to look for.

Mark

[mikesed]

Thanks Mark.

Is the USN 1.1 or 2.0 dependant upon the port you have in your PC?

IE: I'd hate to buy a 2.0 for faster speed only to find my machine is too old and incompatible!

Cheers,

Mike

PS. You are right. There are loads of sellers. Such price differences. And then there is Ebay!

[AtW]

USB 2 is much faster and is backwards compatble with 1.1 howver you need to consider that yyo will only be copying 32-128Mb of data to your USB hard drive which means you can do very nicely with 1.1 USB. most of USB drives are USB 1.1 and 2.0 drivers would attract premium that makes no sense to pay - personally I am content to spend 1 min copying data!

edit: older Usb 1.1 is more of a problem with my mp3 hard drive based player - 20Gigs takes a while to copy with USB 1.1!

[fiddleabout]

Checkout eBay.

I got a 128Mb one for around £20 iirc - auction prices vary considerably - look at completed items and never bid more than say £2 over the cheapest you see complete (unless you are in a hurry). Check P&P carefully - some sellers load it to make the kit look cheaper and to avoid eBay fees.

Proved completely reliable so far but I have seen reports that some cheap ones use cheap memory which could possibly fail - how true that is I don't know - could be rumours started by people selling them at 3-4 times that price

[mikesed]

Just started to bid and noticed flash drives which double up as MP3 players (earphones the lot).

Prices look ok. Would be useful for me if the quality was ok.

Anyine have any experience of these combined Flash/MP3 players?

The Flash stick seperates to be used as flash drive and then plugs neatly into a player.