Need recommendation for USB Thumb Drive

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:20:28 +0000, Harold Stevens wrote:

>> Part of what I make my living at is removing viruses/malware etc.

> FWIW, thread's over right there; there's no link from Dan C to realworld.

What? You snipped the context of what I wrote, but was there something
not accurate or correct in what I said?

--
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:48:45 +0000, Shadow_7 wrote:

> The usb-stick topic does interest me. Since they're getting big enough
> to actually consider using. I mean if a 1.44MB floppy has a write
> protect tab, why can't/shouldn't usb sticks? Not that flash drives are
> all that great with limited number of writes and such.

Limited number of writes? What do you think is a good round number for
how many writes a flash drive can take?

How about the number of writes which can be expected for a 1.44 floppy
disk?

--
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".

Dan C wrote:

: Limited number of writes? What do you think is a good round number for
: how many writes a flash drive can take?

10's of thousands

: How about the number of writes which can be expected for a 1.44 floppy
: disk?

high hundreds - if you have enough patience!

Stan

--
Stan Bischof ("stan" at the below domain)
www.worldbadminton.com

ToddAndMargo-at-verizon.net wrote:
>
>> I would tell you, but I have a policy that forbids me helping
>> any drooling fool who posts to Usenet from Google Groups.
>
> I can not find an NNTP server that is reliable. Which one do you
> use?

Some possibilities below. Please fix your sig marker. It should
be exactly "-- " without the quote marks.

--
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(1 time charge) (free)
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<http://www.individual.net/ (low pay)



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CBFalconer wrote:
> ToddAndMargo-at-verizon.net wrote:
>>> I would tell you, but I have a policy that forbids me helping
>>> any drooling fool who posts to Usenet from Google Groups.
>> I can not find an NNTP server that is reliable. Which one do you
>> use?
>
> Some possibilities below. Please fix your sig marker. It should
> be exactly "-- " without the quote marks.
>

Thank you!

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:46:37 +0000, stan wrote:

>> Limited number of writes? What do you think is a good round number for
>> how many writes a flash drive can take?

> 10's of thousands

>> How about the number of writes which can be expected for a 1.44 floppy
>> disk?

> high hundreds - if you have enough patience!

Exactly. This was the point I was trying to get across to the other
poster, who seems to think flash drives are quite limited.

--
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:54:01 -0400, CBFalconer wrote:

> Some possibilities below. Please fix your sig marker. It should
> be exactly "-- " without the quote marks.

OMG. You've got to be kidding me.

An almost unbelievable case of "Pot/Kettle/Black".

Bugger off, dip****.


--
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".

>>> Limited number of writes? What do you think is a good round number
>>> for how many writes a flash drive can take?
>
>> 10's of thousands
>
>>> How about the number of writes which can be expected for a 1.44 floppy
>>> disk?
>
>> high hundreds - if you have enough patience!
>
> Exactly. This was the point I was trying to get across to the other
> poster, who seems to think flash drives are quite limited.

Not to say that floppies are better, but I have floppies that are over a
decade old and they still function. Not that flash drives are all that
old yet, but will you be able to say that of them. The point being that
when you need them most, they will fail, it's in their design.

If you were to mount your /var/log to your usb drive, it would most
likely not last a single year. And for the price, I can get a HDD of
20x's the size that I can compile things on non-stop for over a year and
still be functioning.

For it's function of temporary storage, I suppose it serves it's
purpose. But you'd think that a device with virtually no moving parts
would last a little longer than a year or two.

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 05:14:27 +0000, Shadow_7 wrote:

>> Exactly. This was the point I was trying to get across to the other
>> poster, who seems to think flash drives are quite limited.

> Not to say that floppies are better, but I have floppies that are over a
> decade old and they still function.

So do I, but that's got nothing to do with your original point. How many
times (how often) do those floppies get *ACCESSED*? If I put a flash
drive in the closet for 10 years and didn't use it, I'm quite sure it
would still work fine, too.

> Not that flash drives are all that old yet, but will you be able to say
> that of them.

I don't know, and neither do you. Right? My prediction would be that
they will *easily* stay functional *far* longer than a floppy disk. There
are no moving parts, no worries about magnetism, very little worries about
heat/cold/humidity/sunlight. Why would that type of device *NOT* outlast
a floppy?

> The point being that when you need them most, they will fail, it's in
> their design.

Kind of a silly "blanket" statement, wouldn't you say? How do they differ
from any other human-made mechanical device in this respect?

> If you were to mount your /var/log to your usb drive, it would most
> likely not last a single year. And for the price, I can get a HDD of
> 20x's the size that I can compile things on non-stop for over a year and
> still be functioning.

Can you put that HDD in your shirt pocket, or on your keychain?

> For it's function of temporary storage, I suppose it serves it's
> purpose. But you'd think that a device with virtually no moving parts
> would last a little longer than a year or two.

I can assure you that they *DO* last longer than a year or two. I have
several that are twice that old, and working perfectly. I'm quite
confused as to where you are getting your information about how reliable
flash drives are...

--
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".

> Can you put that HDD in your shirt pocket, or on your keychain?

I seem to remember a 20GB credit card size usb hard disk. More like
wallet size, but it'd fit into a shirt pocket. And that was five or more
years ago for about $200, so there's probably better options out now.

The point I've been trying to make is that if you use your stick as you
would a regular harddrive, like the one you run linux from, it will fail
quicker than a regular hard disk will fail. Now there's ways to set it
up to minimize it's stick useage, but if you do regular OS type read and
writes to the OS partition like swap files, logging, and whatever, it
will fail.

Now for typical useage of backups, and what not it'll likely last a good
while. Which isn't all that impressive, I've seen 20+yo reel to reel
tapes that are still being used and still work. Not that arguing about
parking your 69 chevy in your barn for X number of decades and it still
works fine, versus putting 200,000 miles on it in under a year relates to
an nntp server recommendation.