Hi DU computer nerds!

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

:) I have come into possession of a 1g USB. What is it good for? I hear about these things but don't know what to do with them....

[CK_John]

1. Just a bigger, faster floppy drive. You can backup files, transfer files, etc.

[struggle4progress]

2. I sometimes use then to transfer files from one machine to another or to back up files

I have several 8gbs that I've put copies of my OS install disks onto so I can reinstall my OS from a flash drive as well as from a CD/DVD. That saved my neck once

[pokerfan]

3. I keep Ubuntu (Linux) on mine

It's bootable so if anything goes to hell on my hard drive I can boot from the USB thumb drive.

I've had a hard drive just die on me. No warning whatsoever. Just up and died one evening when I cold started. And when it died, it died in such a way that my machine couldn't see any other drive (I had three at the time). My initial panic was the motherboard had died. In fact I was positive the hard drive controller had died. It was still under warranty but before I took it back I first wanted to remove the drives I had added. So I started pulling drives and quickly determined that whenever that one particular drive was installed, the BIOS could not 'see' any drives (including the optical). It's still sitting here on a shelf if you have any ideas but I think it's something to do with the SATA interface electronics. Anyway, that's a case where I could have booted from USB had I wanted to.

[pokerfan]

4. delete (dupe)

[unhappycamper]

5. You basically have a 1 GB hard drive you can slip in a shirt pocket.

Think of it as a file cabinet - you can stick in files, folders, pictures, anything. Anything you can put on your computer you can put on a USB stick.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

6. Thank you all!

I take a lot of photos. I think I'll back them up on this thing.......... :)