There was a thread elsewhere about pny thumbdrives (TD) that didn’t work on win 98 computers without a lot of hassle.
What brands of TD’s work as advertised on computers running Win XP and Win 98?
What brands of TD’s have you or someone you know had good luck with (durability, speed, etc)?
Thanks
Windows 98 doesn’t have native USB mass storage drivers, so at the very least, you have to install them for any flash drove. Usually, you get a cd in the box.
I discovered this on my parents 98 box, after having tossed the driver disc for my USB HDD enclosure the week before, figuring I wouldn’t need it.
2000 and XP should recognize the drive and assign it a letter automagically.
Win98’s always been a bit skittish with any sort of USB. Win98SE (Second Edition) is better, but by no means foolproof. Whether it’s a camera, scanner, or even a simple “dumb” hub, 98 always seems to need a driver and an incantation or two to make it work.
XP’s ability to understand USB is almost magic in comparison - just plug it in, and something pops up that more or less says “Yay! Pictures! Do you want to put them on the web, print them, or copy them to a folder?”
I use one that simply says “USB 007” on the label. I bought it from Jameco Electronics (www.jameco.com) and it works as advertised on XP computers.
Actually, I had one for 18 months and it mostly died (turned into an “unrecognizeable USB device” on which I couldn’t store or retrieve). This was after getting wet, getting dropped, etc etc as it is on my keychain in my jeans pocket constantly. So I bought another model that did not fit my Dell computer USB port, returned that and got another Jameco one which now works fine.
The Jameco catalog claims 10 years data retention, and perhaps I should say that wasn’t correct because it died. But I also think that might be unfair considering the treatment.
I have had great success with my PNY 128MB Attache 2.0 on a variety of systems and OSes.
Win XP: 3 different desktops of various vintages (USB 1.0 and 2.0)
Win 98: 4 year old laptop. I can remember if I had to install drivers from a disk or not.
OSX: Works great w/ my iMac on 10.2 and 10.3
Handy little buggers they are.
What Black455 said. If the drivers have been installed previously for some related USB device and a thumbdrive works on Win 98 the first time some people think 98 handling it “automatically”, but 99.99 percent of the time this is not the case and drivers for a related USB product or another thumbdrive had been installed previously that works with the thumbdrive. I don’t think there are any “driverless” thumbdrives for Win98. It’s the OS not the drive.
I have a LexarMedia JumpDrive 128 MB USB 1.1 thingy – it worked on Win98 after I installed some drivers. It has worked flawlessly for me for about two years, even after going through a machine wash cycle.
Wasn’t it Windows 98 that crashed on Gates when he was trying to demonstrate USB?
This review from my favorite tech website will tell you everything you need to know about USB drives. It’s a good read, with lots of basic info and some benchmarks.
Yeah, sort of. IIRC, it was an early beta of “Windows 98 Service Release 1”. Eventually MS changed the name of it from “Service Release 1” to “Second Edition”. They were gonna carry over the “Service Release” terminology from Windows 95… for example, Windows 95 (the first edition) didn’t support FAT32 but Win95 SR-1 did. I guess marketing had other ideas…
Some of the newer drives don’t come with CDs, but make you download the drivers from the company’s website. No real problem.
I have a bunch of them, since they seem to be the new number one gift when you speak at a vendor conference or something.
LOL! I thought I was the only one. I’ve washed my Attache and it continues to work just fine. Don’t think it would survive a drying, though.