Hey, your MCNL pain here with what MAY turn out to be a valid question of interest!

I was in Circuit City the other day buying another 2GB drive (hey $19.99 ya cant beat it) I noticed an 8GB USB key that I hadnt seen before .

and at $80 its not a bad price:

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Kingston-8G...roductDetail.do

but if its STORAGE size you can get a LOT more lor that same $80.

I KNOW that MCNL will work just fine and dandy on a WD passport USB powered HD:

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Western-Dig...roductDetail.do

so i imagine that it will install in a LOT of other USB storage devices.

BUT in the case next to the key i saw this:

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Samsung-Ple...roductDetail.do

It's an 8GB "microdrive" apparently it has a physical spinning HD inside (7200RPM's) but is smaller than your keychain.

Now I cant figure out why you want to spend $30 more and buy that over the USB key, but they have been around longer than 8GB keys, so again, not sure of it's advantages. But i DO know that SOME OS's were having issues with them a few months back because it was a HD but not in the "normal" method.

Of course in the same case was a 250GB USB HD, for the same price, BUT it needed an external powersource.

Thoughts, opinions?

J

With a usbkey there's no moving parts to go wrong, and it's definately going to be quiet.

I won't argue about the "quiet" part, but the average life of a usb key is *way* smaller than a harddisk- for various reasons.

but is there an 'different' preps that have to be made between a USB key (HARD RAM) and a USB Micro Drive (Spinning Media)?

again i dont know why there WOULD be, it just seems that at one time there was.

j

Under certain conditions, yes I agree. But the balance swings way over in favour of the usbkey when things like portability, durability, physical size and performance (with the exception of writing) are taken into account.