As my subject line says, I was thinking of getting my first USB flash drive, if only because I’m sick of burning CDs - the length of time and the space they take up. 'Course, I’ll probably still continue doing so as a secondary backup even if I do get a flash drive, only I’ll be able to backup a lot more often WITH the flash drive.
Any suggestions on brands? How much should I expect to spend for something halfway decent? I know they can get pretty cheap, but I have no idea if those low prices will buy me only crap. I’d only be using anything I get to backup personal files, most of which are MS Word, no huge music or movie files. IOW, my capacity needs are fairly low right now.
Differences between on and off sale at retail are huge. Any national brand is fine. 32 gigs for $50 @ buy.com is the best deal I’ve seen. The Sony retractable drives on sale are handy, cheap and don’t need a cover. Re prices Circuit City or Best Buy on sale or www.newegg.com or www.buy.com online
Just bought a SanDisk 8 gig for $19. Cap less is good, A light on it that shows activity is good. Most have U3 software which is like an OS. Lots of free programs for download. An example is Win Amp, I backup all my music on the drive and since the player is also on the drive you can use it on any computer regardless if there is a player on the computer or not. Very durable compared to CD’s.
I program chair a workshop which gives out our proceedings on flash drives. We got 1 GB drives for just over $4 each, in quantity 100. We had some left over, and I was throwing them to people like Mardi Gras beads. I’m old enough to remember when 1 Gig was a lot of disk.
I’d worry about using them for long term backup, though. Too easy to crunch or lose. For short term it is fine, and way better than any other mechanism for transferring data.