Searching for a USB flash drive

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So this morning I did a search on yahoo for ‘USB flash drive’ and I’m just overwhelmed. With the exception of one company doing a paid survey, I’m bombarded with offers to buy anything that’ll plug into my USB port – from a 16MB pen drive to an 8GB 2.0 USB drive. I bought my laptop back in 2001, so I probably don’t have USB 2.0. Could I still use a 2.0 drive though? I suppose I could spend a week, pouring over countless reviews and such, but I was hoping to hear back from a few of you who’ve already taken that journey, and see if you had any advice for me. Thanks for any input!
 
flashgordon! said:
So this morning I did a search on yahoo for ‘USB flash drive’ and I’m just overwhelmed. With the exception of one company doing a paid survey, I’m bombarded with offers to buy anything that’ll plug into my USB port – from a 16MB pen drive to an 8GB 2.0 USB drive. I bought my laptop back in 2001, so I probably don’t have USB 2.0. Could I still use a 2.0 drive though? I suppose I could spend a week, pouring over countless reviews and such, but I was hoping to hear back from a few of you who’ve already taken that journey, and see if you had any advice for me. Thanks for any input!

what do you mean so I probably don’t have USB 2.0. :knock:

I like your name. :cool:
 
Yes a USB 2.0 drive will work on the USB 1.1 ports. It just runs at the USB 1.1 speeds.

I have a Sandisk 1 Gig pendrive (Cruzer Mini) and up until a few weeks ago it worked flawlessly. Currently though its dead, it may be fixable but I haven't tried yet. There are probably 3 or more posts on this board about people having the usb flash drives that no longer have partitions or are not the correct size. Most of them are because of user error, but I think I've read 1 or 2 where the drive just did it all by itself.

What I really liked about my drive is that it was pretty small, and if you have a small usb hub you can still plug things in the bordering ports. I know some of the drives out there are wider than the usb plug, so if your hub has them all aligned horizontally you can't use the ports on either side. With the Cruzer Micro drives you can though.

Some drives can be plugged into an mp3 player for that drive. The drive becomes the storage for the mp3 player, the player is just a player and doesn't have storage space itself. That may or may not be a feature you would like.
 
any flash drive will do fine. I would just get the cheapest one but that is just me. :bounce:
 
I have a couple of the sandisk cruzer series of flash drives one died when I plugged it into a USB port the others are still working.

I dont use any of them much anymore though I bought a samsung 40GB 5400 RPM 8 MB cache notebook drive and put it in a small 2.5 HDD external enclosure that is USB 2.0 and it is not only waaaayyyy faster than a pen drive it has alot more space and it still fits in a shirt pocket. all for less than 100.00
 
iss said:
I have a couple of the sandisk cruzer series of flash drives one died when I plugged it into a USB port the others are still working.
Thanks iss. What do you think caused that sandisk drive to die?
 
SNGX1275 said:
Yes a USB 2.0 drive will work on the USB 1.1 ports. It just runs at the USB 1.1 speeds..
Any idea what it would run me to updrage my 1.1 port on my Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop?

SNGX1275 said:
Some drives can be plugged into an mp3 player for that drive. The drive becomes the storage for the mp3 player, the player is just a player and doesn't have storage space itself. That may or may not be a feature you would like.
What do you think about the iPod Shuffle, which can be used to both as a flash storage drive and music file player? $100 will get you 512MB and from what I understand, Apple's ACC encoder at 128 kbps is equivalent to the MP3 encoding at 192 kbps - same sound quality on less drive space.

Thanks!
 
Thanks iss. What do you think caused that sandisk drive to die?

it happens, everything can be running fine then the next thing you know you plug in a flash drive and boom it's gone. sometimes it is the machine. the machine I plugged the flash drive that died into has had an intermintent problem with recognizing devices plugged into the usb ports at times. and the problem is flash drives are not particularly robust devices. that is why I was always leery of plugging a flash drive into other machines.
 
flashgordon! said:
Any idea what it would run me to updrage my 1.1 port on my Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop?

What do you think about the iPod Shuffle, which can be used to both as a flash storage drive and music file player? $100 will get you 512MB and from what I understand, Apple's ACC encoder at 128 kbps is equivalent to the MP3 encoding at 192 kbps - same sound quality on less drive space.

Thanks!
$20-$40 depending on how many ports it has and the manufacturer.

iPod Shuffle is probably a safe buy if you are wanting mp3 playing ability and storage in 1. Plus I believe Apple warranties all their iPods for 1 year, so thats good if it dies on you.
 
If you have Win 2000, or above, you don't need to install a driver.
However, if You have Win 98, then you do have to install it on your PC and each computer that you want to use it on, if they are using Win 98.
 
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