Informed choice about flash drives? What's to inform? They're tiny,
I'd prefer an MP3 player over that. A 2 1/2 inch enclosure is half
the thickness of a pack of cigarettes and a little taller. How much
smaller do you need?
Arbitrarily claiming something is "small enough", when there
are other options that are a fraction of that size, while
also being an order of magnitude more reliable, is
pointless.
Informed choice means actually comparing the qualities of
each, not trying to discount any that don't coincide to your
personal choice. The fact is, the external mechanical drive
has only two things going for it: higher capacity per $ and
higher total storage space potential. OP has, (thus far)
made no mention of a capacity requirement so basing a choice
on only storage space is quite premature.
If you want to go really small, how about just carrying around an SD
card? This argument could go on.
Yes, if OP had an assurance that *most* systems, all that
would need accessed, had an SD slot, it would be a fair idea
except that a flash thumbdrive is actually a little more
durable due to an outer casing "usually" meant to withstand
a littl external force, while SD card's casing is barely a
sheath to be used within another device.
Yes, if you're only going to need half a gig of space, the flash drive
is fine, but I don't know about you, the rule is you never have enough
storage.
Speaking in vague terms, true. Returning to reality, that
is generally at a PC or laptop, not "necessarily" when one
only needs ability to transport some files.
There's a big difference between half a gig and 60.
Yes, I can carry half a gig in any pocket and forget I have
the thumbdrive with me, it is no bother nor burden to have
it always available.
Of
course, I don't use MP3, only full CD rips, a flash drive wouldn't
made sense for me anyway, but we're not talking about me. The
notebook drive will make him future proof.
There is no such thing as future proof, but even so it's
quite the opposite, as the notebook drive is expected to
fail within a few, maybe too few years. Lugging around an
external drive and subjecting it to additional stress is not
always a good idea. You might be assuming some kind of
usage pattern based upon your own personal needs- a common
mistake people make, thinking that everyone else needs same
thing they do.
You "might" be right, that if details OP hasn't mentioend,
mandate more than 1-2GB of storage space, the external HDD
solution is necessary. You have jumped to a conclusion not
supported by evidence thus far.
Further, I just read an article on a side by side comparison between a
thumb drive and a notebook drive. There is none. Thumbs are specific
application drives, not suited to be banged around, or be treated as
and actual drive.
You don't even have a thumb drive do you?
I have several. They are completely usable where an
external is except they're lesser capacity and limited to a
few million write cycles. You'd have to be doing something
VERY unusal to ever approach that, like trying to put a
windows swapfile on one exculsively.
They can't compete. Maybe they can with a slow
interface such as USB2 anyway.
You have no idea what you're talking about. There are fast
and slow external drives and likewise with flash
thumbdrives. There is no external drive with as low a
latency as the slowest thumbdrive, and the fastest flash
drives are now at the threshold of USB2 bottlenecks.
If you want to try to argue outside of USB2 interface, you
have missed the entire point of portable storage, that if it
requires some special interface instead of the most common
externally available one, suddenly it's usefulness is very
low.
Remember, I don't know about you, but there is such a thing as being
too small.
You would do well to wait until you have more information
before assuming you know what OP needs. Of all possible
criteria to consider between a flash or external mechanical
drive, the capacity is the most obvious and is rather
pointless to mention as anyone can plainly see that detail
in product descriptions.
You mull over the very thing that would not need to be
mentioned because it is among the "obvious".
As far as flash not being expensive: I just read about Toshiba's new
military notebook, it uses memory instead of a hard drive. 19 gigs
costs around 467 dollars, according to Toshiba. Sorry, that's
pricey.
Again, you randomly jump to silly conclusions.
You do not yet know WHAT data needs transported.
I never claimed it was less expensive PER CAPACITY.
Rather, in the real, normal, everyday sense of the word
where lower price equals less expensive, it is less
expensive for a median to low capacity flash thumbdrive.
I can't help but think you've never been in any situation
where you really needed to transport data on a regular
basis. Some people need email, or office documents, contact
info or reports, etc, NOT as much storage space as they can
strap into a shock resistant 2nd package they backpack
around with them. Often all one needs is a most
reliable/durable method of transporting files and doesn't
want to fiddle around with setting up an internet server for
it (though that is yet another viable option in some
scenarios).
