A fairly neat price I think, shame it probably won't go lower, £170~ give or take when you can get 1GB sticks for £10.

pretty nice as a boot drive if you mount it internally. the only reason people buy raptors is so they boot fast, you cant beat flash for that

Originally Posted by M4RTIN
pretty nice as a boot drive if you mount it internally. the only reason people buy raptors is so they boot fast, you cant beat flash for that

Whats the transfer speed on a flash drive such as this ?

read ~35MB/s, write ~20MB/s tops

22MB/s read, 7MB/s write.

Pretty poor.

are they really that slow.. oh well i cant afford one anyway lol.. in that case i fail to see the point of such a device, why not just burn a dvd9

How does that make it faster than a raptor then ?

The problem is that this is a USB flash drive, and IDE based flash drive is a LOT faster then an IDE drive because the seek times are almost non existant.

Originally Posted by sinizterguy
How does that make it faster than a raptor then ?

i got confused .. i had read something about using compact flash in a mini itx system using a ide converter and assumed usb was the same.. forgetting it only works at usb 1.1 at boot up anyway lol

ECC provides sophisticated capabilities to enhance product reliability, which allows the drive to continue to operate even after repeated use over time.

I've seen recommendations in a couple of places to turn caching off on a pen-drive Portable Firefox to get the most drive life;

Originally Posted by Portable Apps
Disable Cache, History and Form Saving - In Firefox Portable, these are actually all disabled by default to save wear and tear on your flash drive and to improve performance while you're using Firefox Portable.

Is this likely to be a factor with big HDD-replacement Flash drives?

I was under the impression that you could only access flash drives a few million times before they died? So, if this is true, maybe that's why turning off caching, history, etc... would be best for the drive because it would reduce accesses?

All drives will eventually succumb to read/write useage. Its like a light bulb, the more you turn it on and off the more likely it is to fail, however they can effectively last for decades if never turned off.

Keyboards have a life aswell, the membranes eventually crumble and rot.

Originally Posted by DougEdey
All drives will eventually succumb to read/write useage...

Yeah, but no, but like in relative terms, Flash v Magnetic platters?

Originally Posted by Flash lifetime
Most Flash memories only guarantee a limited number of erase and re-write cycles. Typical values are guaranteed cycles of 10,000 times. Most parts will work far longer - it's just not guaranteed.

Don't seem too bad, my 1Gb pen-drive will be an antique in a couple of years.

On magnetic, I've just been given a Celery 333 system with everything working perfectly (if slowly) from 1998, even the original keyboard. Packard Bell really know how to build a PC. :D

Originally Posted by cpemma

Don't seem too bad, my 1Gb pen-drive will be an antique in a couple of years.

My 512 is already there then and it's one of these. (a Flash Voyager) The 8 gig one supposedly has significantly better read/write times, even if the write is double it'd be better. I don't think I need 16 gigs, much less 8, but it would be nice, and it is half the price, so if I buy it the 8GB on will be my next.

Originally Posted by cpemma
On magnetic, I've just been given a Celery 333 system with everything working perfectly (if slowly) from 1998, even the original keyboard. Packard Bell really know how to build a PC. :D

I have the same situation! Our dell from 1999 with Win 98SE still gets the job done had it has a 10GB Western Digital and a PIII 760 Mhz. Explains why all the hard drives in this house are Western Digital.

Would an 8GB drive work when plugged into the USB 1.1 port of a WinME pc without having to install drivers and re-start the machine?

Originally Posted by sinizterguy
Would an 8GB drive work when plugged into the USB 1.1 port of a WinME pc without having to install drivers and re-start the machine?

ME has built-in "general purpose" USB drivers same as 2k and XP, but I guess YMMV depending on the pen-drive.

Example:

Originally Posted by Imation
Imation's Flash Drives are available in various capacities and are plug-and-play compatible with:

* Windows 2000, Me, and XP
* Macintosh OS 9.x, OS 10.x, and Mac OS 8.6 with Apple Mass Storage Driver v 1.35
* Linux Kernel Version 2.4 and higher

Windows 98SE drivers are available for download below.

My Kingston just doesn't mention ME.

Originally Posted by DougEdey
22MB/s read, 7MB/s write.

Pretty poor.

I notice Crucial have a USB2 pen drive faster than that. (Gizmo! Overdrive range). 25Mb/s read, 13Mb/s write. Around double a normal USB2 drive price but twice as fast as mine. :'(

If I was going to spending a lot of money on a USB pen drive though, I'd want it to be as virtually indestructable as the Flash Voyagers are.

<A88>

Usb Flash is far too slow, unless your moving only an album at a time for my purposes its too slow :(

Increase USB capacity that is really great news we can now store not just one full length movies but several of it..that's really cool not to mention there will still be extra space for other stuff hehe