Best USB flash memory card?

[lord of the mark]

Well the dino computer gave us a fright the other day, when it wouldnt reboot properly - finally overcame that, but we dont trust it at all now. Good news is QOTM is ready to buy a new PC almost immediately. Bad news is dino could go any day, and we dont have the HD backed up. We'll need to transfer stuff en masse when we get the new PC anyway, and modern way to do that seems to be a flash mem card. I think a 256 MB card, or even a 128 MB card could hold our most essential files (virtually all documents) and so I would look to use that as emergency temp backup. Indeed to buy within next 2 days.

I see various brands - KIngston, Lexar,Memorex, ATP, Apacer, Cruzer, Jump, Attache.

Prices are similar.

Any thoughts on quality?

[chequita guevara]

You could just remove the hard drive and put it in the new PC as a slave. Then just copy the data over, and once you verify you have what you want, pull out the old drive. It's what I did when I put my 250 gig drive in this machine.

[Dinner]

The brands don't matter since they are just a commodity. Bigger is always better since they're cheap and you can never have to much storage space. Currently I own a 256MB and a 512MB thumb drive but I'd like to ditch them both for a 1 GB thumb drive. They're great for transferring files or moving pictures.

[pchang]

For slightly more, you can get USB minidisks that hold 4GB or more.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
You could just remove the hard drive and put it in the new PC as a slave. Then just copy the data over, and once you verify you have what you want, pull out the old drive. It's what I did when I put my 250 gig drive in this machine.

Well thats what i told QOTM we'd try to do the night it looked like dino was actually dead. Before dino sprung back to life. But Dino could die any day, and it COULD be the hard drive. Assuming dino lives till the new PC is in place i may well do the HD thing - though i doubt QOTM will trust my skills enough to immediately open the box on the new PC, and I sure would rather not pay anyone to. My plan was to do some upgrades to the old PC which we intended to keep (although im getting unsure about that) and then show that no harm was done.

[alva]

though i doubt QOTM will trust my skills enough to immediately open the box on the new PC,

Dude, smack her around from time to time, be a man, will ya!.

Do make sure you can install your old HD though ( remember P-ATA, S-ATA drives etc), I think most current motherboards can handle both, best to check it out though.
On the other hand, just buy a USB-key, you'll enjoy it. They are dirt cheap anyway.

[chequita guevara]

If Dino has problems, stop using it until you bring home the new PC.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
If Dino has problems, stop using it until you bring home the new PC.

we're using it as little as possible. No games, nothing else unnecessary. There are some tasks QOTM needs it for relating to POTM's Bat Mitzvah.

[Whaleboy]

When's POTM taking hers?

I got a 128mb from dabs.com... their own brand on the site, it's nice, I don't need more than 128mb for a glorified floppy disk, moving around docs and the occasional mp3, as well as backing stuff up.

EDIT: My hebrew is asexual

[Urban Ranger]

Backup your data on a CD-RW also works.

[lord of the mark]

all done. I got a 128 MB Istick. Nearly panicked - it turns out most of the flash drives on the market are compatible with Win98SE and up - NOT with Win98. I was almost going to give up and back up on floppies, when I found the Istick at Microcenter. 128 MB turns out to be quite enough - i put virtually all our docs on it, plus a few of my favorite spreadsheets, some quicken backup data, and one of POTMs Zoombini games (other than that NOTHING game related) filled 40 Meg of the drive. May add some lower prior items, but not too many. Back to using the PC, since now if it goes weve got backup.

RE> CD RW = yup, sometime ago I bought an external CDRW drive - I backed up data sometime ago - then tried to make a music CD, somehow the software screwed up something, and made it so BOTH the external CDRW and the existing internal CD saw all disks as music discs - couldnt play ANY Game or install ANY software - various help boards, etc couldnt help - finally when i removed the external drive, and cleaned off all trace of the software (Roxio, IIRC) the interal CD drive went back to normal. Not interested in going through THAT again.


RE: Bat Mitzvah - in a couple of weeks.

[Whaleboy]

UR: CD-RW's are sensitive to damage, too slow and too physically big

My brothers Bar Mitzvah's in June. I don't want to buy another suit .

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
finally when i removed the external drive, and cleaned off all trace of the software (Roxio, IIRC) the interal CD drive went back to normal. Not interested in going through THAT again.

IIRC, Roxio have problems. It used to be good, but not anymore. Nero