I'm not very computer illiterate (or should I say 'computer lazy'?, so I'm not up to date on all the new toys. Could someone explain flash drives?

I do know they are little storage containers, if you will. Right? Can you store documents? Say use one to transfer documents from one computer to another? Store school files that you don't want sitting on your HD?

Thanks you in advance for any help you can give.

SQD

SQD, It's like an extra little hard drive. Documents can be stores on it and use from one computer to the next. Students can write a paper, put it on the flash drive, take the flash drive to school and use it on a school computer. Pretty much exactly what you said.
Sue

Thanks, Sue. My husband bought me a laptop last year for my birthday and a flash drive is exactly what I need to transfer documents to this computer.

A minor computer glitch last night had me stressing big time because this one had crashed. I have a lot of school stuff (I homeschool) on my HD and I thought sure it was going to be lost. Just realized that a flash drive might actually store all that safely.

SQD

Just be careful and make sure you also back up the drive. They do go bad from time to time and can break if you aren't careful with them. I know several people who have lost documents because they only stored them on the flash drive. So back it up as well. That way you have two copies somewhere and always have something to fall back on. ^_^

They are immensely convenient, and as manufacturers stop putting floppy drives into PCs they are starting to become the preferred choice for moving data (if you don't want to burn and carry around CDs / DVDs). But I've lost three so far - one went through the washing machine and came out working intermittently, one was in my pocket when I helped to move a widescreen TV up three flights of stairs and somehow got banged badly enough to damage it, and one just stopped working for no readily apparent reason.

My thoughts on this - get the best make with the best guarantee you can afford, and make sure that it has a strong casing. And keep it safe - they get bashed about a lot if you aren't careful.

I have a couple. Good makes etc. One went bad. Also you can't just unplug them from the machine. In the system tray there will be an icon that you click on and tell it you want to (ok heck I don't know the word it uses) but any way you have to click the icon to tell it you want to unplug it before you do. If you don't the flash drive will crash and burn your data - maybe the flash drive as well. So flash drives are great if you want to move data around.

However, if you do home schooling and need to back up every thing you could get an external hard drive to back up your files to. (There not that expensive anymore). But as with the flash drives go for a good brand. I have one I back up all my pictures to as well as burn them on CDs.

I've lost stuff before so I'm like Clark is to Lois about "don't you back up to floppies." I double back up everything. Somethings I triple back up and keep out of my house in case something happens.

I have a couple of crucial files for my games business which I can't afford to lose; customer addresses, that sort of thing. I keep a copy on my hard drive, another on the memory stick, and another on a network hard drive, but since those are all in my flat I also email copies from one gmail address to another; gmail gives you 2gb of storage, and the storage for both addresses would have to be deleted before the files were lost.

Ok, I'm a little confused here. Reading this topic, I thought this was one of those many new things people keep inventing and we can never keep up with. But what's the actual advantage of a flash drive over an ordinary usb stick?

Actually, I think "flash drive" and "USB stick" are supposed to be the same thing as to what SQD is referring to.

There are some other "toys" out there that have flash drives in them (such as MP3 players) and are not properly USB sticks, but I'm sure SQD is referring to USB sticks (or USB flash drives, or anything else they might be called).

One thing that I disagree, though, is calling them "memory sticks". These should be reserved for those cards we use in cameras, cell phones, etc. Has anyone tried searching for "memory sticks" on eBay (meaning those thin cards that usually Sony uses on their cameras and cell phones)? I got a bunch of results for "USB sticks" with people calling them "memory sticks".

malu