USB Key Advice?
 

I understand that many of you have USB keys, and rely a lot on them. So I'd appreciate if I could get some first hand advice/testimonials from as many of you guys as possible. All help is beneficial. :)

My friend needs a USB flash drive with at least 128 MB of space, and it has to be compatible with Mac OSX and Windows (I assume XP). He also does not want to spend much.

Useful information bolded for your convenience. Peace out. :cool:

I have a USB key with 512 MB. It's pretty nice having around, provided that you don't lose it or you misplace it. Thanks to this little gadget I have no problem with sharing my documents to my classmates in my college. I'm going to get me a 1 gig USB key, because I sometimes run out of space. It's not that expensive to get a 512 MB...I got mine for about $30 but that was way before. From what I know, you can get a 1 gig for about $22-$27

22$??? doh!
in my country it costs like... oh... been a time since i bought mine i see :P, they are down to 20$ here to (well we don't have $ but anyway) but thats just for an 512... can get that for just 15$ or something. But if you want a 1gig i think you have give like somewhere between 50-60$... here at least ;) don't know about the us. :P

-thondal-

I'd recommend at least 512MB if it fits the budget. I have a 256MB one, but it's a tad small at times (fortunately I typically use it for text documents and source code). For going between a Mac and Windows, he'll probably want to format it as FAT32... I don't know what filesystems Mac supports, but I'm sure FAT is in there; Windows pretty much has FAT and NTFS, though there are drivers for others out there (e.g. ext2). FAT is probably the quick and easy way out, and probably the better for it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820141059

1GB for $20

If you can afford it go for 1GB, anything less than 512 is too small these days.

It will have to be formatted in Fat32. Mac OS X at the moment can read NTFS drives but cant write to them.

Also when you delete something on OS X remember to empty the trash as it wont actually delete untill you do. You will also get lots of .DS_Store files visible when you next look at it from windows. I think you can get OS X to stop doing this but i cant remember how.

Shouldn't really be a problem if it only costs 20$... i mean, even i can do that, and i'm broke.. most of the time at least... get loads of money once a month...then they suddenly dissapear... loan,phone,apartment... girlfriend.... allthough i guess I'd have to put her first, but still :P the money dissapear.

I mean, if i was going to buy myself a 1gb in norway then i'd have to pay something like 60$ as mentioned earlier... stupid norway....

-thondal-

I'd have to agree with the bigger is better technique. Always go for the price break unless you can't afford that, then drop down.

Plus with bloat in MSOffice, you never know how big the next word document will be, 11 Megs a document might be the base size in Office Vista instead of 11K.

Additionally it's nice to throw some extras on the stick. Firefox portible is always nice.

Hmmm... *eyes that GB stick* I might be ordering something in the near future.

-MBirchmeier

Almost every single one of you has suggested a 512 MB or a 1 GB, even though in my first post I specifically stated 128 MB. There are reasons he only needs that size. He needs to be transferring school documents and musical compositions to and from a computer disconnected from a network. That's all the space he needs, but extra can't hurt I guess.

I checked that 1 GB stick, and can't find anything on the page about its compatibility.

All USB sticks work on Macs and Windows. There is no compatibilty issues to be talk about.

I pointed out to use FAT32 for compatibility between windows and Macs.

Get 128Meg if you cant afford it. But its a waste because if you want more then you will need another one.