[CLUE-Tech] Re:C-T#1328 USB Flash Drive

[R. Savage]

I've been pleased with the Lexar Jump Drive; have 2 of the 64 MB size. 
They're often on sale at OfficeMax for $10 after rebates (USB v. 1.1). I 
see larger sizes on sale at Compusa, and sometimes at OfficeMax. They 
come formatted FAT32, which was fine for WinXP; XP was NOT happy with 
the one I had reformatted to ext2, and insisted on reformatting and 
giving it a name (in addition to Drive E:). It can tell the difference 
between my two Lexars, A and B.

On the Linux side, the Jump Drive shows up as a SCSI drive; sda or sdb 
or...depending what's already plugged in. The Hardware Browser from the 
RedHat Main Menu|Tools should identify it even before you mount it. I 
just created a directory /mnt/LEXAR and mount it as
mount   /dev/sdb1  /mnt/LEXAR and do what I want with it. System Monitor 
will also show it among your devices after it's mounted. I presume one 
could partition the Jump Drive, but have never bothered.

The case is translucent and the mechanism inside has a small light that 
will flicker as you mount and read or write it, which is useful 
feedback. On WinXP, it shows up on "My Computer" as a removable drive, 
like A: and the CD-ROM; also gets an audible "ding dong". There is also 
a nice little utility called usbview that you may have to add from RPM 
if you want lots of nitty-gritty details about all your USB layout. 
LEXAR has a web site, but they don't speak Linux - or don't admit to.

One downside is the form factor; it's shaped to your fingers, rather 
than just straight-sided. That means it takes up 1 1/2 USB slots, a 
minor pain if you're short of slots. Possible downside: depending on how 
your security tables are set up, the fam routine (in xinetd) may give 
you a persistent "device is busy" warning when you try to dismount it.

The LEXAR drives are the only ones I've tried - mostly because I've been 
satisfied. I presume others work the same, but don't know. Haven't used 
Win prior to WinXP, so don't know about them.

Dick Savage
Franktown