OT Flash-based USB stick with a capacity of 8 GB

Interesting:

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I wonder if XP, Excel, and SolidWorks would fit on one?

Best Regards, Devon T. Sowell

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Reply to
Devon T. Sowell
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Devon,

This isn't as off topic as you might think. Have you ever used a memory stick for SW files? I have found the following to be true:

  1. Latency seems a tad bit higher than a hard drive. Can't explain that.
  2. They get nice and warm. Like every other bit of hardware in you system, it can be stress tested by running SW related activities.

I think to run SW on a USB stick you would have to create an image of your system disk and load it into a ram disk to run. Otherwise how are you going to deal with the registry entries these programs need to run?

Dev> Interesting:

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I'm no expert on this subject.

I have used memory sticks for small assemblies and drawings, so I haven't really noticed a latency problem. The heat gain is noticeable.

I seem to recall that XP Pro takes approx. 4GB, all the files in my desktop folder Program Files are 7.2GB. I think it would be interesting to see if the entire OS, Excel, and SolidWorks could be loaded. Then, I guess, trying to get the Host to Boot off this drive would be the next requirement. Taking this further, one could have a portable "computer" for $560.00(price of the USB stick in the article) plus software on a USB stick?

Devon

Reply to
Devon T. Sowell

Devon,

As well as the issues Paul pointed out, there's also the issue of reliability.

Flash based devices aren't a very good choice where alot of interactive reading, writing, and overwriting, is involved. This is because flash memory has a finite limit to how many times it can be written to. In a dynamic environment, like an OS or an application like SW, areas of memory are constantly being changed, updated, etc. This could wear out a flash module rather quickly. The last time I checked, the individual transistor elements were limited to about 400K read write cycles. This sounds like a lot, and it is when dealing with file storage. But an OS or application would go through that number pretty fast.

Rrgards

Mark

Reply to
Mark Mossberg

Interesting. I didn't know that.

Thanks, Devon

Reply to
Devon T. Sowell

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