[Discussion] Compact Flash Card vs Thumb Drive

[Joseph J. Hansen]

August 16, 2009

About a year ago, I bought an Edge all-in-1 Card-to-USB adapter to  
use for file transfers to and from my eee pc Linux netbook.  The  
adapter cost about $20, and supports many kinds of cards, but I've  
only used it of CF and SD cards.  It works just fine and only weighs  
about an ounce, making it very easy to carry around with the  
computer.  On a trip, I can download my photos every day, backing  
them up to an online server, which not only makes room for more on  
the camera but also eliminates worry about losing the pictures if I  
were to lose the camera.

I've seen a 33-in-1 adapter for $5.89 that claims to handle 33  
different kinds of cards.  see:  http://www.cheap-battery.com/ 
bza145.html for a description of the adapter and a complete list of  
supported cards.

Most of these adapters say they are for windows, but as long as your  
usb ports are standard, there's no reason that they won't work.  On  
my Mac, the adapter (with a card inserted) shows up as an external  
disk drive.  It can be formatted, read, written to, etc.  The version  
of Linux on my ee pc (Xandros) has a 16gb max, which is plenty for my  
needs.


On Aug 16, 2009, at 12:09 PM, 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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Joseph J Hansen
Lexington Strategic Associates
221 Follen Road, Lexington, MA 02421-5802

tel (781) 863-5003
jhansen at LexSA.com,  www.LexSA.com