Catchy title, huh? Kristie suggested I might need a jump drive for my doctoral experience. I called my local electronics store and was told I actually might be happier with a flash pen, but then a zip drive would work, too. For heavens sake, what do I do? Zip. jump. flash or just get a giant case of floppies? I want to carry my work between work and home and never lose a file, accidentally erase, or otherwise sabotage my soon-to-be award winning dissertation. Suggestions from the techies?
My vote would be for the iPod or one the other pocket-sized hard drives (SmartDisk, FireLite, LaCie, etc.). I use my old obsolete iPod (5 GB) for back up on the go, as well as for music. A friend does the same with a LaCie 20 GB that cost him about $150 a few months ago. One of the many on-line services where you can up and download data from any location for very low cost might be worth considering. Incidentally, but perhaps relevantly, I find Craig's List a large and friendly and reliable place for used electronics and lots of other stuff. www.craigslist.com. They have local ones in about 25 cities. I've bought and sold stuff there for several years.
Why would you select a pocket drive rather than a flash pen? I'm not sure what the difference is between these various drives.
Zip drives are dead. I saw two at the thrift store yesterday. I would probably start with usb jump drive. Several of the office supply stores have them for $10-$40 this weekend (64mb to 256mb). The iPod would be very useful if you need to store bigger amounts of data.
I do not know about the pen drive, but the jump drive has a huge advantage - if the pen drive has the same advantage, then it is up to you.... here it is. If you use a zip or jazz drive, you are stuck with needing to have the drive and disks. (CD's, Disks, etc. have the same problem). Let's say you go to your advisor with some hard copies and during the discussion you start discussing some other research, he/she asks you for the file so you can go through it right there. If you have a zip disk, the person you are meeting with must have the drive to read the disk. On the other hand, the jump drives are USB based. That means any system with pentium II and mac's have used them even longer (any system made and bought in the last 5 years) will be able to read it, no extra hardware needed. They also come in sizes up to 512 megs. About the size of a small cigarette lighter.... and it has built in security. You put a password on it, so people do't think about stealing it. If they do, it is worthless. (But don't forget your password, if you do, there is no way to crack it yet). If you don't mind me asking (and I will do a search), what did they say about the pen drive that makes it better than a jump. I am glad you are thinking about this, it has been a small part, but a huge aspect of organizational success, and a huge lifesaver when someone wants to give me a file, I want to give them a file, or we want to share files.
Usb drives and pen drives are the same. Pen Drives: http://www.pendrive.com/intro.php Usb Jump Drives: http://pcworld.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=665424/ut=4302291aa4c1a389
With the leaps technology makes, in a couple years we will carry every document we ever wrote or was created concerning us on one of these.
Kristie, this was the advice from a Circuit City salesperson. The third one, actually, since the first two were clueless. He claimed that the jump drive is not permanent, so if you want to permanently store files, the pen drive is the way to go. I checked ebay and noted the jump drives looked like they cost more and were larger than the pen drives, but went into gigabytes. Haven't done much more research beyond that. If the iPod recommended is for Macs, that leaves me out. I have PCs with Windows XP.
I have a little Storix usb portable hard drive that is 20 GB. Ordered it from a mailorder place called Tiger Direct. I think it was around $150. It is about the size of a wallet. Very handy with plenty of drive space. Okay found it: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=578996&sku=S228-1000 Ron
Here is one on special this week: http://www.officemax.com/max/solutions/product/prodBlock.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&expansionOID=-536897153&prodBlockOID=537112824 Somewhat small at 64 mb but net cost of $10. There are other specials running this week and whatever you buy in 6 months it will be 1/2 price or less.
If any others here are also in the market for storage, I found this article which helps explain the choices: http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,111110,pg,1,00.asp
