[Discussion] Compact Flash Card vs Thumb Drive

[Dale A Cook]

Joseph J. Hansen wrote:
> 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
>
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	I have used my usb stick/thumb(s) in current version of ECS since 1.2 and ECS 
(all)2.0 beta's  both fat16 AND fat32.......................