[Discussion] Compact Flash Card vs Thumb Drive

[BillN]

There is one more factor which is relevant - survival of the device.

A couple of people have asked me to please recover data from a damaged 
USB drive, which I was not able to do. The USB attachment is fragile, 
both the male and female parts are cheaply built, and will not tolerate 
much if any abuse.

OTOH, on my desk is a multi card reader for my camera CF and small 
memory cards. Despite care, early on I broke a micro card, and will no 
longer buy them. CF is a very robust physical unit, and is probably the 
best choice IMHO. I even like the larger size - less likely to get lost 
and easy to handle if you have big hands like mine.

So you pays yer money and takes yer chances.

BillN

Mark Brueggemann wrote:
> --- 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
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