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Who invented the thumb drive?

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Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#81

Post by wildzzz »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #54

I'm surprised that the market for this is hot. Who is still buying USB sticks or SD cards? I haven't in quite a while, because I don't know who to trust anymore: cheaper variants are likely to be those counterfeits with hacked metadata that advertise having 4-10x the capacity they have[0], and more expensive ones are a crapshoot wrt. performance. In recent years, for the occasional need to physically move some files,…

I'll buy a new one whenever I'm at Microcenter because they are so cheap. I don't keep any important data on them, they are really just for making boot disks or transferring data between non-networked machines. I've got this one USB 3.0 flashdrive that I've have for years that for some reason I've yet to lose. The 3.0 interface is busted but the 2.0 interface works fine. If I'm using a 3.0 port, I have to very gently insert it so that the 3.0 pins don't make contact. I hate that flashdrive but it's the only one I can seem to find when I need one asap.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#82

Post by knicholes »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #75
TeMPOraL wrote: post #54

I'm surprised that the market for this is hot. Who is still buying USB sticks or SD cards? I haven't in quite a while, because I don't know who to trust anymore: cheaper variants are likely to be those counterfeits with hacked metadata that advertise having 4-10x the capacity they have[0], and more expensive ones are a crapshoot wrt. performance. In recent years, for the occasional need to physically move some files,…

> Who is still buying ... SD cards? Photographers.

3D Printers

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#83

Post by rav »

PinguTS wrote: post #78
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean to add, the article says that thumb drives are still hot and the market will grow by billions a year more in a few years, but... I haven't used a thumb drive in years. The only time I actually went to look for one was to plug it into a shitty digital picture frame, and that one would also accept SD cards.

It is still today the fastest way to move large amount of data around. If both parties have 1 Gbps connection it will take about 20 min to move about 128 GB. But if one end has only 100 Mbps, then it is already 3,5h. If can only maintain reliably 25 Mbps, then it is already shy over 14h. So you can almost mail a thumb drive faster.

In my experience, it can be faster to figure out how to plug two computers together with a direct Ethernet cable and set up static networking and run netcat or a Python simple HTTP server to transfer such large amounts of data, than it is to copy it onto the crappy slow USB thumb drive that I have in my keychain.

Sure, physically moving the thumb drive from one computer to another takes virtually no time - the bottleneck is getting the bits on and off the thumb drive, which can be quite slow depending on how cheap a thumb drive you happen to have lying around. I would be happy to be able to sustain 100 Mbps (12 MB/s) on transfers to/from my thumb drive!

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#84

Post by rwaksmunski »

nopenopenopeno wrote: post #67
narag wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, for me it helps replacing another device that I canned twenty years ago: the printer. Every time I need to print something to feed some troglodite's requirement, I put a pdf in a pincho and go down the street to the call shop. 20 cents is absurdly expensive, but much less than maintaining a printer for one paper sheet a month at most.

Get a black and white Brother laser printer. It's super affordable, costs almost no money or time to maintain, and always works.

Well, get an older one that does not use the chips in the toners. The new ones are iffy.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#85

Post by tracker1 »

rav wrote: post #83
PinguTS wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still today the fastest way to move large amount of data around. If both parties have 1 Gbps connection it will take about 20 min to move about 128 GB. But if one end has only 100 Mbps, then it is already 3,5h. If can only maintain reliably 25 Mbps, then it is already shy over 14h. So you can almost mail a thumb drive faster.

In my experience, it can be faster to figure out how to plug two computers together with a direct Ethernet cable and set up static networking and run netcat or a Python simple HTTP server to transfer such large amounts of data, than it is to copy it onto the crappy slow USB thumb drive that I have in my keychain. Sure, physically moving the thumb drive from one computer to another takes virtually no time - the bottle…

Depends strongly on the drive, with a lot of variance, and seedy vendors.

You can get effectively NVME over USB. Now, the question is, are you using a 5 or 10mbps (or higher with TB/usb4) connection, supported cable, is there a hub in the way restricting traffic, etc.

With most computers, the front ports may or may not be the fastest ports. If there's a front panel USB C connection, that's usually your best bet, then red/yellow ports in the back... Of course, it could be an older device/interface, etc.

I kind of hope that with USB5, they standardize on labelling/cable requirements as well as reduce the "optional" bits to at least fall under one of 2-3 umbrella sets of requirements. It's a bit of a mess.

All of that said, I have nvme drives over USB that are at least as fast as a SATA connected drive, and generally much faster depending on the port used.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#86

Post by davchana »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #14
mk_stjames wrote: post #8

I can tell I'm getting older by the number of articles I read that take time to describe 'history' of things that seem obvious since I lived through them, like the explanation of how 3.5" high density 'Floppy disks' held up to 1.44MB. Like... "I know... oh god some people don't know that."

I mean to add, the article says that thumb drives are still hot and the market will grow by billions a year more in a few years, but... I haven't used a thumb drive in years. The only time I actually went to look for one was to plug it into a shitty digital picture frame, and that one would also accept SD cards.

Recently I have been using it to print color printouts from Staples self service. They have an email to printer option too, but sometimes the files are too big for email, and I don't want to keep deleting them from my sent emails folders.

My car has a usb drive with my favorite music.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#87

Post by davchana »

rwaksmunski wrote: post #84
nopenopenopeno wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a black and white Brother laser printer. It's super affordable, costs almost no money or time to maintain, and always works.

Well, get an older one that does not use the chips in the toners. The new ones are iffy.

I was lucky to get laser black white printer for $49 on Black Friday 2020. Cartridge also costs same. HP.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#88

Post by tracker1 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #50
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean to add, the article says that thumb drives are still hot and the market will grow by billions a year more in a few years, but... I haven't used a thumb drive in years. The only time I actually went to look for one was to plug it into a shitty digital picture frame, and that one would also accept SD cards.

It's like floppies at the late 00's. You never need them, except for those 5 or 6 fringe use cases that nobody else has (everybody has some 5 or 6 of them). If our computers were actually able to connect with each other, we would be using phones for everything already. But they can't, and phones are so user hostile that it's not obvious that you can even read your data in any way.

By the late 00's you were as likely to have a Zip drive for smaller (100mb) exchanges... if it weren't for the excessive licensing fees for the disks, the fate of the devices might have been a lot different. I really didn't consider thumb drives worth my time until they started getting over 256mb or so, I think it was also after USB3 was a thing, but it's a bit muddied in my memory.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#89

Post by tracker1 »

cm2187 wrote: post #66
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean to add, the article says that thumb drives are still hot and the market will grow by billions a year more in a few years, but... I haven't used a thumb drive in years. The only time I actually went to look for one was to plug it into a shitty digital picture frame, and that one would also accept SD cards.

Still useful to install OS on physical machines.

It's probably a good 75% of what I use thumb drives for.

Re: Who invented the thumb drive?

#90

Post by NavinF »

rav wrote: post #83
PinguTS wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still today the fastest way to move large amount of data around. If both parties have 1 Gbps connection it will take about 20 min to move about 128 GB. But if one end has only 100 Mbps, then it is already 3,5h. If can only maintain reliably 25 Mbps, then it is already shy over 14h. So you can almost mail a thumb drive faster.

In my experience, it can be faster to figure out how to plug two computers together with a direct Ethernet cable and set up static networking and run netcat or a Python simple HTTP server to transfer such large amounts of data, than it is to copy it onto the crappy slow USB thumb drive that I have in my keychain. Sure, physically moving the thumb drive from one computer to another takes virtually no time - the bottle…

10gbps and 20gbps USB M.2 enclosures are dirt cheap. I use one (with a 1TB SSD inside) as a flash drive. You can also buy USB SSDs that are smaller than M.2 enclosures but have the full SSD feature set (SMART data, TRIM, etc) just like enclosures.

It's not as fast as a USB-C to USB-C cable that can do 40gbps with IP-over-thunderbolt, but good enough for most use cases.

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