Right now my Sony USB drive is having a hard time running multiple apps. They just hang, and when I go to dismount the drive it takes a good 3 minutes after closing everything before allowing me. Are there any suggested high-speed drives to use?
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Personally I suggest a portable hard drive. They have a huge capacity and can get pocket sized USB powered drives fairly cheaply these days. Best of all performance wise they use the host PC's internal memory
PortableApps.com Advocate
Thanks for the idea, but I really only need 8 or 16gb of storage. I also don't want to spend that much and have to carry a portable hard drive around to class and work.
I got one that works fine, but when I try to use it on certain other computers, namely school and library, they crash. I suspect the extra power requirements or security settings. What do you think it could be? Mine uses 2 cables, one for data and one for power. Could I run it on just one cable?
;>jamvaru
In truth I'm no expert however I wouldn't think it would work with just the one cable
I would suggest getting a single corded drive. I use a Western Digital hard drive and never had any issues. They're very reasonably priced for portable drives however they still cost. I know you can get a 500GB WD Passport (Portable Hard Drive) for about $120 AUD. Thats what I use. Unfortunately I bought mine several months ago for $250 AUD and since watched the catalogue price drop.
PortableApps.com Advocate
No. You need both cables. One is for power, the other is for data. With just power, you have no connectivity. With just data, you don't get the power to turn the platters in the drive.
Single-cable drives use one cable to power both. USB ports do put out power, but if the cable is data only, the power is grounded out. In the case of a two-cable drive, if you don't plug in the power cable, nothing is going into the power plug, and the grounded-out power from the data line cannot be used because there is no physical connection.
Thanks,
I didn't think of that when I got mine (thermaltake)
It is real nice, but you need two cables.
Do you suppose the power requirements of a single cable hd would be too much for some computer? I figure they have a security program that detects "intrusions" or extra power drain, etc.
;>jamvaru
>>>No. You need both cables. One is for power, the other is for data. With just power, you have no connectivity. With just data, you don't get the power to turn the platters in the drive.
I have a Cruzer Titanium 8Gb which I use very frequently and it hasn't let me down yet :). It even survived a 2 hour spin in the washer.. And this taught me also to make more frequent backups. This Cruzer comes with U3 software, but that can be uninstalled.
I just got a 16GB version. Apparently the awesomeness that is LiquidMetal has been removed to keep costs down.
Until then I had a Corsair Flash Voyager. It's really quick and reliable, but big, lint collecting, and has an easy to lose cap.
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I had a Corsair Voyager too and really enjoyed it. One day I lost my cap but they replaced it and sent me a new cap
Then I lost it
Now I have a Cruzer Titanium and am happy with it.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Does the cap cost $$?
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it didnt.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Funny, I have a Corsair Flash Voyager as well, and the cap just up and disappeared a couple weeks ago. Nice to know they replace them.
I only recommend flash drives by Corsair, I've always trusted them for quality and speed. I hear OCZ is good, too. I'll never buy another SanDisk after mine failed on me after only a year of light use.
The Corsair Readout is really cool, displays the volume name and megabytes remaining, plus a little 8-piece pie chart that means the same (space). I got my 4GB for $11 shipped at Newegg, but I see they don't have it anymore. My 16GB (Flash Voyager) was closer to $30, a little better deal.
My next portable device will be a portable hard drive, though. Much faster.
Hot damn. I am now kicking myself for waiting almost 2 weeks to request a new cap. That was real easy. Look - hit up corsair.com, click on USB drives, click on FAQs, and the first question is about the missing cap. Click the link, fill out the form -- use a proper email address! -- and then check your mail, click the link. They then tell you this:
That easy. If you have a Corsair and you lost the cap, they will send you one in a week, for free.
The hardest part was choosing the model number of my flash drive -- I guess I could have chosen any, and the GT was tempting, but I really wanted it to match (and red is an ugly color IMHO). Also the date, I don't know when I bought my drive, but I guessed, and I made sure to put it a little more recently. I forgot Corsair warrants these things for 10 years or life, I was thinking 90 days. So I fibbed by a month or two, I didn't feel like pulling up my Newegg order history, not on a computer that's not mine.
I'm already a loyal Corsair fan, but service like that will be the tie breaker if it ever comes between Corsair and something equally reputable like OCZ (though OCZ did give me a cool mousepad for buying 2GB of their RAM, so they're cool too).
Except the Voyager I have collects a lot of dust and doesn't plug into the computer very space-efficiently. I will admit it is an awesome drive. I can't believe 10-year warranty is almost unheard of. When I run out of space on my Cruzer Titanium, I'll have to look into Corsair and OCZ again (running FF isn't the greatest thing on 9MB/s flash drives).
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What's your Voyager get? Mine gets about 20MB/s, and while it's not great, it ain't bad. I want a portable hard drive, though. Well, I want an SSD, but they're expensive and I don't see portable ones, just internal ones, though I imagine you could just get a SATA enclosure and make one?? Just under $200 USD for a 32GB one that's rated for 1.5 million hours of operation, that ain't bad. Obviously you don't store all your media on it, just your OS and applications. Games, too, if you do that. Very ideal for PortableApps.
The Voyager isn't as pushy as the Corsair Readout, but I like the plastic case of the Readout a lot more than the eraser feel of the Voyager. I can see how they can be problematic in a laptop/netbook, but on the Dell at work and my homemade computer at home, there's never any cramping around the USB ports.
If you're not using the Voyager, you could load it with your favorite portableapps and give it as a gift... I've done that a couple times. My wife got my Readout (4GB) and I got a standard Cruzer for a friend (2GB). His profile on our local Firefox got moved to his Portable Firefox as well (that was when we stopped using an installed Firefox). Flash drives are so cheap and you can ship one for under a buck (get the padded/bubble wrap envelopes, also under a buck), it's the perfect gift for anyone into computers.
How do I benchmark it?
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Google for "hdtune", run it (it's portable), and choose your flash drive.
There's a topic somewhere up here where we compare our scores. Search for that (using terms from your HDtune report, for starters), find the post, and post there.
First, I just wanted to let everybody know that my replacement cap came yesterday, along with a letter, which you can see below with a click or via the Text-to-Image extension for Firefox.
http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t159/JCDentonDX/Blog/corsairLetterCap...
Wow. Is that cool or what? 8 days after I ordered it, I think. Yep, 8 days since the post I made where I said I ordered it. Free. No charge.
Also, as I said this would be the tie breaker between Corsair and others, if you saw my PC build plans, I'm gonna put 4GB (2x2GB) of Corsair XMS3 DDR3 RAM in (and sometime down the road, another 4GB of the same).
Mine came yestarday too. What a coincidence (or do they always come on Monday?)!
But what still concerns me is that the flash drive collects dust.
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You mean it collects dust, as in you don't use it, or that it attracts dust?
I do find the texture of it annoying. Still, it's nice that I can drop it 5-1/2 feet onto a hard surface and it just bounces right back. (Not a good way to kill any flash drive, granted, but it's still funny.)
I suspect if the surface were really a problem, you could probably find a way to dilute some glue, and paint it on the flash drive with a little brush, like hobbyists use to paint those little Warhammer figures. Just do the bottom, let it dry 24 hours, turn it over, then do the other side.
If it's not rubber though, it's attracting fingerprints. If it's not one thing, it's another.
I'm more concerned about it getting run over.
Um... do you have a link :p?
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Link? No. I just pulled that out of the air. Hence the words "probably find a way to". wikiHow has some good how-to articles in wiki format, there's also eHow.
And run over by what? Your mouse? Where are you leaving your flash drive that it is in danger of being run over by anything that could hurt it? You don't mean run over by a car, do you?
I carry my drive everywhere. That's why I like them waterproof, shockproof, good warranty, etc.
That and my flash drive is the most expensive thing I bought myself :P.
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I carry my flash drive just about everywhere (well, everywhere I could use it) but it's always in my pocket, in a computer, or sitting on a desk. Or plugged into my Xbox 360 or Philips DVD player. It's never been on the floor (unless I was doing a drop test). And it's certainly never been a place tires are likely to go while attached to a moving vehicle. Even if we lived in a pretty little apartment in the city, there's no reason for it to be on the pavement in the driveway. But no, we live out in the country. You drop something in the grass, good luck finding it. So... we don't drop stuff in the grass. If you think you're prone to, make use of the neck strap that came with it.
Most expensive thing you've bought yourself? Couldn't be more than $40. I paid a little over $30 for mine. I've bought an album for more than that (Final Fantasy 7 soundtrack, 4 discs, imported from Japan, $45). I've bought a lot that costs more. Still, I value my flash drive, but seems that if you value it that much, you wouldn't worry about all that because you'd take better care of it. Only thing you mentioned I care about is the warranty. Pretty sure it's 10 years. Corsair is cool like that.
$46. Free shipping. It was a 16gb Sandisk Cruzer Titanium. I sorta wish I bought the Corsair one now. Can I get an RMA, do you think?
My keychain has been through many evolutions. As my pockets got more bulky, I stripped a mini flash drive, a flash light, something I don't remember, and the neck strap. Now it's a "Buckle Up" buckle, my 16gb Titanium, and a usb extender to keep it from getting bent.
Good point. I already back it up every few days with Back In Time so I guess I just need to save $70 if I lose it to buy a nice 32 GB one...
It is. I don't think I've even used my 8GB for a full 2 years. I just love the free replacement caps :P.
Speaking of, anybody have any experience with TrueCrypt? I want to encrypt my archive files, but I'm a bit more worried that I will need it at the worst of times.
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Oh, if you're gonna spend that kind of dough, get a 320GB portable hard drive. More reliable (for longer), faster, and 10 times more space. Gets its power from the USB.
Not with TrueCrypt (but I guess you know you'll need admin access on every PC you use it on, at least one to install the driver) but if you want to encrypt an archive, WinRAR can do it for sure, so 7-Zip ought to be able to. When I wanted to really lock away some private photos, I put them in a password-protected archive, then put *that* in another password protected archive. Not to double compress -- neither archive used any compression -- but just so one could not even see what was being encrypted. And you don't need admin access to use 7-Zip or WinRAR. Pretty sure you don't anyway. (WinRAR is not free, but they offer a portable one to licensed users.)
Continued from here--it was getting cramped.
Does it fit in my pocket?
No way. I will probably never do that. It just loses its geek factor :P.
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Does an iPod? It's only a little bigger. If you know how big a laptop hard drive is, it's that plus about a quarter-inch (at the most) on the sides, a half-inch (at the most) front to back, and almost nothing top to bottom. Plus a USB cable, usually 6".
A typical man's tri-fold wallet is about the same size, closest thing I can think of, but not quite as thick, and a bit longer.
Now, a portable hard drive is not quite as durable as a flash drive. You can't throw them around, and they aren't waterproof. They have little moving parts. Kept in the little pouch they usually come with, they should be fine for most activity, but they are kinda fragile.
YOU JERK!!!
I only have a 8GB
Ditto, my 1 GB survived the washing machine too
Wondering any body tried to run Portableapps on 32GB/64GB Thumbdrive? want to know the speed as I heard that those high capacity thumbdrives are very slow, just want to know the feedback or recommendation? Thanks
from EasyDisk (cheap and tacky) and it is about 30% faster than my previous Sandisk Cruzer Titanium was.
But I really miss the cool casing of the Titanium
I'd heard they were slow, too, but I needed the storage for a specific purpose, so I got the drive.
Once I'd benchmarked it, I've switched to it fulltime as my main drive.
However, as always, your mileage may vary...
Many thanks for your prompt reply, much appreciated it. I was planning to buy a Sandisk contour 32/64GB but bit reluctant to buy it as I dont know the exact speed. I have tried Imation Nano 8GB one but its damn slow for Portable apps, will look into EasyDisk. Thanks
I've had many bad experiences with cheap USB drives, so I didn't hold out much hope for my Cruzer Titanium lasting more than a year or two. Especially since it was practically being given away at the time. So far, so good, a couple of years old and still going strong, no errors, no signs of wear and tear, and the USB connector hasn't snapped off yet. I'm happy.
Is everyone go to laugh at me if I say that the capacity is only 2GB?
How about warranty? I know Corsair has a (strangely whopping) 10 yr. warranty, while Sandisk has a 5 yr. warranty on their Titaniums (the rest have 2). I don't know about you, but I think my Titanium isn't going to last 5 years--because of something as archaic as new technology :|.
2GB is what I see as the norm these days. 1 GB's are nearly impossible to find, but 2 GB's run for $10. And 2GB is what Dropbox, SpiderOak, etc. offer (in other words, it's perfect for Dropbox Portable :P).
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For a flash drive I use a Patriot Xt 8Gb. I picked it up for less than $25 at newegg. It is one of the fastest drives on the market.
For a hard drive I built my own 120Gb 5400rpm 2.5". It has been a couple of years ago, but works great. You could probably build one or buy one for less than $80 with 250Gb or more. I plan on replacing mine with a 7200rpm version soon.
Life is about the journey not the destination!
The Kazoo Spartan
I just checked this last week. Maybe two weeks ago. The 250GB and 320GB portable hard drives start at $55. $80 would get you a portable hard drive that size by a more famous maker, or a 400GB+ drive.
Can you even get a 2.5" 7200RPM drive that runs off USB and doesn't require its own power supply? I thought a lack of speed was part of the reason they can run off USB power.
I once bought a 2.5" enclosure, and the USB to IDE connector was a dud. Also, the enclosure didn't provide padding near the front of the drive (if the connector is in the back) so if you moved it around much, the hard drive would bang around. It was pretty stupid. I should have blasted it in the reviews on Newegg, but never got around to it. Hopefully they don't carry it anymore.
Also, anyone know anything about SSDs? What they cost, and how good they are for portable apps? Also what sizes one can expect?
For a while I used to use a portable hard drive ripped from a laptop and put in an simple USB powered enclosure. I assume the speed is 5200RPM. It worked well, but the bottom line is that a flash drive is smaller ergo easier to carry, and has no moving parts, ergo less prone to damage (one would assume).
I was always worried that the constant vibrations/movement from carrying around the hard drive might damage the drive. Although this never happened (and the drive still works perfectly today), I find a USB flash drive more convenient.
My personal opinion is that as solid state technology improves (and becomes more common place and less gimmicky), speed and reliability improve dramatically, driven by necessity of demand. Flash drives are the way to go. 5 years ago it might have been a different story.
Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drive can be dropped from up to 51 inches with no damage to the drive.
I'm not selling anything, btw. just letting you know.
I've got one and while i don't go around dropping it, I do take it with me when I go to computer meetings and when ever I need to get files from someone. All I'm saying is that it IS possible to consider portable HardDrives for your portable programs. works great for me.
"No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices." - Edward R. Murrow
I'm new to using portable apps and I found it better to split them up over a few USBs, especially if it's a big or highly graphical app.
So you have multiple flash drives plugged in at once? Or you plug in the one you need then unplug it when you're done? But you always have to carry around multiple flash drives? That sounds like a pain the posterior to me.
Maybe you're using slower USB drives? I don't ever recall having a problem running say something like Open Office from a flash drive. Sure, it's slower loading than when I run it from a regular hard drive but that's to be expected.
Not a criticism per say, since you've found a solution that works for you, but it does seem like overkill.
I have them set up with specific clusters of apps (Utilities, Graphics, office, etc) so I usually only need one USB plugged in. The most I've ever needed has been two, but that's been when I'm on someone else's PC and the second one is for storage of files. It's also a great way of using that USB collection most of us have these days, I've ended up with 8 over the last few years so my smallest one (a 512MB) is being set up with utilities apps that are easy enough for my mother to use on her PC.
My USBs aren't slow, half the PCs I work on are (the usual - low RAM, old, out of date). I'm currently doing further studies at TAFE (a tertiary educational facility) doing IT cert 4, but unfortunately my PC at home outstrips any of TAFEs PCs, so that's also why the split of apps. Carrying a bundle of USBs isn't a worry, not when you've also got to lug a whole bag load of text books and notes.
Fast USB 2.0 Flash Drives
The solution is UNIX
About run .inf is on windows where untill not complete the auto run is not abble to eject the drive
On UNIX this don't happen it
...
I'm not reading this whole thread to see if this was mentioned, but I prefer dual channel flash drives.
Examples:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=&QksAutoSugg...
I own 3 of the OCZ Rally2 drives and they've worked great.
EDIT: BTW, the first USB 3.0 flash drive was announced today so that's future-proof (for now) and backward compatible to USB 2.0
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140557/First_USB_3.0_flash_drive...
That said, USB 3.0 in Intel chipsets has been delayed until 2011:
http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220700486
Cancer Survivors -- Remember the fight, celebrate the victory!
Help control the rugrat population -- have yourself spayed or neutered!
isn't dual channel 3.0 exclusive? So, why bother? A faster single channel flash drive would make more sense, being capable over a broader spectrum of potential computers in use today and tomorrow. Money spent on dual channel capacity would be better spent on improving the performance of the single channel.
;>jamvaru
If you had taken the time to look at the drives on the first link I posted, you'd see dual channel drives ARE USB 2.0 compliant (as they have been for years).
The USB 3.0 drive in the second link was just announced today and isn't even available for sale until December and has nothing to do with my dual channel recommendation.
Reading comprehension -- look into it!
Cancer Survivors -- Remember the fight, celebrate the victory!
Help control the rugrat population -- have yourself spayed or neutered!
Buddha,
As you said above:
I'm not reading this whole thread to see if this was mentioned, but ...
Is it really fair to jump on someone for not having followed your links and read all that was there ?
Be nice please
Tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
I've wondered about the speed difference with those drives. I've got an OCZ Diesel single channel drive. Its read speed tests as 32Mb/s, which is the maximum I've seen with any usb 2.0 device, including hard drives. It's write speed is quite a bit lower, around 14Mb/s.
I'm not sure if the dual channel really means much right now, give that USB 2.0 isn't full duplex.
what good is dual channel on 2.0 usb?
I am curious about which are the best sticks for usb 2.0, not 3.0.
But thanks anyway. I'm sure I'll get a dual channel one eventually, when the performance merits the price.
;>jamvaru
The dual channel flash drives I use cost $7 for 4GB during Newegg's holiday sale last year. At the end of this month those sales will be happening again so look for deals on the larger-sized dual channel drives.
I believe $7 is affordable by anyone and the "performance merits the price".
Cancer Survivors -- Remember the fight, celebrate the victory!
Help control the rugrat population -- have yourself spayed or neutered!
so, they are competitive then, with current single channel speeds?
;>jamvaru
what about kingston? I picked a 4gb one for 9.99 on sale and it hasn't failed me yet. Granted it can't run ffp very well anymore. Can't go further than 2.0.0.20 without it hanging on me. But it's speedy