USB flash drive recommendations?

April 22, 2004 10:48 AM

Trying to find an appropriate model of one of those little USB flash drives.. [more]

I will need to use it in both a Windows XP environment, and more importantly to copy files to and from Mac OS 9 machines where I do not have “administrator priviliges”, or whatever the Mac equivalent of such is. It doesn’t need to have much memory, 32 or 64 MB should be fine, and I would like to find one that is cheap and sturdy. Thanks!

posted by ac to Shopping (7 answers total)

Not sure whether it meets your filesystem requirements, but Gizmodo spammed a really good deal on SanDisk USB drives yesterday.
posted by Danelope at 11:02 AM on April 22, 2004

Sandisk Cruzer is what I use, and has worked perfectly in every machine I've connected it to, including the OS environments you've listed.
posted by benjh at 11:23 AM on April 22, 2004

Every USB flash drive I've seen functions as a generic USB Mass Storage device, meaning that the drivers are built-in to Windows XP (and 2000 and Me), and OS9 with the latest updates. So, in your case, everything should be totally plug-and-play.
posted by zsazsa at 11:25 AM on April 22, 2004

Another vote for the Sandisk Cruzer. I picked one up at Staples a few months ago, very cheap with an instant rebate. The only issue I've had is that the little plastic cap over the usb plug will occasionally pop off in my pocket. Luckily it came with three of these caps, so losing one wasn't the end of the world.
posted by shinynewnick at 11:41 AM on April 22, 2004

I recently bought an Apacer flash drive to combat the cap-losing problem; it's cap is attached by a plastic-coated steel cable.
posted by falconred at 12:49 PM on April 22, 2004

I second the Apacer. We just bought a raft of them at work and everyone seems to really like them.
posted by bonehead at 4:46 PM on April 22, 2004

FWIW, my Lexmark works fine across Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Windows XP and Windows 2000.
posted by werty at 9:33 AM on April 23, 2004