[Discussion] Compact Flash Card vs Thumb Drive

[Mark Brueggemann]

--- On Sat, 8/15/09, Brian Grawburg <grawburg at myglnc.com> wrote:


> If you had to choose between using a
> 1 GB thumb drive or a PCMCIA CF card to act like a 1 GB
> drive, which would you prefer?

Comment 1, I wouldn't bother with a 1GB anything.  This stuff
is practically giveaway hardware until you get over 32GB.

Comment 2, I bought a CF to IDE adapter that fits into a floppy
drive bay and when a card is present, the BIOS sees it as a HDD.
This of course presumes we're talking about a desktop.

Comment 3, I use one of my old ThinkPads at work that has a PCMCIA
CF adapter and it's the only drive in it.  Boots and runs right off
the CF card.   The PCMCIA port is in the list of bootable devices
and is pretty handy, especially since the machine is too old to
have a USB port.

On my laptop I use both PCMCIA CF and USB, and in fact under OS/2
the only one I can use is is the CF, since I've never been able
to get the USB to work (eCS 1.2).  My current digital camera
has an SD card so now my only way to get files onto the OS/2
box is copy them from winderz or linux onto a FAT partition or
sneakernet via CD.

I think it's going to depend a lot on what your actual goal is.
CF has some advantages from a hardware standpoint and are like
solid state drives in a way, but there's no denying that USB is
the defacto standard for removable storage and has support in just
about every computing device and peripherals out there.  Even
my DVD player and flat screen TV has USB ports on them.


Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM