OK - first let's establish that I am a technophobic middle aged mum who knows not a lot about computer hardware......my daughter has come home from school and requested the purchase of a memory stick to make life easy transfering info from our home PC to school and vice-versa for projects. She also tells me that I would find one useful for backing up our harddrive instead of worrying myself to death that one day I'm going to lose all my info from our computer.
So can any kind person please tell me what I should be looking for, how much it is likely to cost and where I can get one from (preferably online).
Many many thanks in advance for any help you can offer - and apologies for cross posting and maybe using the wrong newsgroups...
"LynLyn" wrote in news:sAyHd.146$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe4-win.ntli.net:
You'll have a job backing up a hard drive with a memory stick!
However the other uses are very valid, and it can be used to back up your data, docs, mail, etc if you feel you're living dangerously at any time (like compacting folders in Outlook ExpresDON'T DO THAT!!!!
Not recommended for *real* backup; use CDROMs for that, they're only coppers.
I assume you have USB, 1or 2 doesn't matter.
If you have Windoze 98, you will need a driver, it may come with it on a disc, or sometimes you have to download and install the driver - not at all hard, but be aware you have to be connected (yeah, course you are, what you doeing writing to us etc etc...) How about the school computers? will it be compatible? prolly, but make sure.
They come in all capacities, up to a a gigabyte, prices from 10's to a hundred squid, look around. More bytes is better, but I shoud think
512Meg would be an overkill.
A jolly good store is Crucial, for any memory prob (except mine... what did I come in here for?) not necessarily the cheapest, but IMO the best, and pretty competitive on price.
formatting link
Cow, did you see the price of the 1 gig - must be I've got to get one
I think the memory stick she is referring to is most likely a USB drive which plugs into a USB socket and acts as an additional drive. Do a google and you'll find tons of suppliers. To back up your stuff you're better off burning to CD or DVD.
tell you a bit what a memory stick is about, but before you rush off and buy one make sure you have a reader on your current PC to read/write to and from the memory stick.
She's not winding you up!! There is quite a range of size an price. Maplin might be a good place to look, or CPC. Both have on line catalogues but you need an account for CPC, but this is easy to set up. Sizes range from 32Mb to 1Gb.
I've just ordered another 128Mb from CPC for £20 or so. (Whether this is the best price I don't know, I was ordering other stuff too) It's quite a reasonable size. I keep most of my data for work on one this size and carry it home. It is much lighter than a laptop!
Ebuyer have them, your local computer fair will be selling them at a very low cost. You wont be able to back up a hard drive with one, the biggest ones are around 512MB. What you can do is back up your data files with one. I paid approx £14 for my 128MB one and the price of those has now come down to around £10. Micro Mart is out tomorrow at W H Smiths etc and most advertisers in there will have them.
Just to add - the normal term is USB pen drive, NOT memory stick. When people talk of memory sticks it normally means the Sony style memory cards to me which I doubt your daughter is after.
I think your daughter has a good point. I would get one and back up all the useful stuff you need, stuff like your personal data (basically everything in your my documents folder - word docs and excel spreadsheets etc), stuff that you wouldn't want to lose. I wouldn't suggest you use it to back up all your programs etc., there are better ways of doing this. Have a look at how much data you want to backup and then at least double i (or treble it) and get the next size memory stick up from that. Have a look on somewhere like amazon or dabs, they are fairly reasonably price on there.
First, 'memory stick' is a (sony?) trademark, that is a type of removable memory that is used by sony (and other products). It tends to be more expensive for the capacity, though it can be plugged into a PC through an inexpensive adaptor.
An example of what you're probably looking for can be found by going to
formatting link
On the menu bar at the left of the page, near the top, click "flash memory" Now "USB Flash drives". "Show all in this subcategory" (at the top),
Many of the products shown will have free shipping.
Depending on what she's doing, the first (6 quid, 64MB (MB is a measure of capacity) one may even be adequate.
Daughter may also want to store music on it, in which case that size would only fit an album or so on.
USB 1.1 is an older design of connector and will write this size of disk in a minute or two. USB 2 can often be several times faster (it can be plugged into the same socket, but the slowest link will determine the speed)
You can get devices of this type with up to 1000MB (1GB) of storage, for around 50 quid.
Alternatively, electronics -> portable audio/mp3
These are 'mp3 players', and will play/store music. Many of these will also store data.
Generally anything with 'iPod' on it is very desirable, and also very expensive.
Something like order code 81583 (Ebuyer 256MB MP3 player) is much, much cheaper, this one at 30 quid, which will work to store music on. Or 78183, which comes with FM radio, twice the memory, and voice recording for about 50 quid. (as an example of iPod pricing, the iPod Shuffle (no voice/FM/display) is
First, 'memory stick' is a (sony?) trademark, that is a type of removable memory that is used by sony (and other products). It tends to be more expensive for the capacity, though it can be plugged into a PC through an inexpensive adaptor.
An example of what you're probably looking for can be found by going to
formatting link
On the menu bar at the left of the page, near the top, click "flash memory" Now "USB Flash drives". "Show all in this subcategory" (at the top),
Many of the products shown will have free shipping.
Depending on what she's doing, the first (6 quid, 64MB (MB is a measure of capacity) one may even be adequate.
Daughter may also want to store music on it, in which case that size would only fit an album or so on.
USB 1.1 is an older design of connector and will write this size of disk in a minute or two. USB 2 can often be several times faster (it can be plugged into the same socket, but the slowest link will determine the speed)
You can get devices of this type with up to 1000MB (1GB) of storage, for around 50 quid.
Alternatively, electronics -> portable audio/mp3
These are 'mp3 players', and will play/store music. Many of these will also store data.
Generally anything with 'iPod' on it is very desirable, and also very expensive.
Something like order code 81583 (Ebuyer 256MB MP3 player) is much, much cheaper, this one at 30 quid, which will work to store music on. Or 78183, which comes with FM radio, twice the memory, and voice recording for about 50 quid. (as an example of iPod pricing, the iPod Shuffle (no voice/FM/display) is
By "memory stick" to you mean a usb pen drive? They can be bought in various memory sizes (64Mb,128Mb,256Mb etc etc) Vary from £10 up to £100 depending on size etc Most useful if both PC's have Windows 2000 or XP on them. (can be used on Windows 98) See
formatting link
or
formatting link
for examples How much you want to spend? Do you have usb ports on your PC?
would recomend the smaller ones. They do wear out and can be damaged b poor handlng (in particular unplugging the thing too soon) so 2 small ones are better than one 512MB.
CPC have two payment methods. If you pay by card at the time of ordering you don't need an account with CPC. However both Maplin and CPC appear to be expensive for flash drives (UBS). I've recently purchased a 128M device for £8.50 (incl. p&p) from ebuyer.
A few months back it would have been a good price. I've seen 1G flash drives for around £50.
One thing the OP should note that kids passing data at school is a good way to get a virus. A virus checker that is constantly kept up-to-date (perhaps daily) would be a good idea.
I used Unibond bathroom and shower sealant from the local shed. Expensive at 8 quid a go but it's so bloody waterproof it's v.difficult to smooth it after application 'cos it sticks to
*everything*. Flexible too, the only thing that broke it in our case was for some reason the shower tray managed to drop a few mm (don't ask why, I dunno yet!) and the stuff stretched and broke the grout on the surrounding tiles resulting in much leakage.....
The moral to this tale is if yer tray doesn't drop this stuff is good! IMO obviously.
DO NOT use a USB memory stick as a backup device. Why not? Well, you can lose it, damage it, corrupt it. CD or DVD is the best option for most home users at the moment.
As a convenient way of transporting data, then yes, USB memory sticks are brilliant.
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