Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with USBdrives

In OS X, USB Drive also mounting non-existent CD-R

gwint — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 12:16:18 -0800

In OS X, when I mount this new USB drive, a dialog appears with "You inserted a blank CD...." How do I get this to stop showing up? Also, what Volume Format should I use to allow the USB drive to be mounted on both OS X and Windows? The full text of the dialog that appears is "You inserted a blank CD. Chose an action from the pop-up menu or click Ignore." If I click OK or Ignore, the USB drive is mounted (Called "483.8 MB Relay UFD Media" in Disk Utility) AND a CD-R image is also mounted (Called "Relay UFD Media".) I've already reformated the USB drive as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"

It's not how big it is, it's how you use it

poweredbybeard — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 09:58:16 -0800

Getting a USB drive - should it be flash memory or mini hard drive? I want a USB drive, primarily as a handy daily backup for in between monthly backups, but also for having portable data (and portable Firefox and OpenOffice seems useful too).

It seems that for the same price you can generally get three to four times more storage on a mini drive than a flash drive... so what are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Should the fact that the mini drives have moving parts be much of a concern? And has anyone actually found a way to use all the space on a 4GB portable drive yet?