Jump Drives: Bigger Capacities and Cheaper than Ever

I have written a number of times about jump drives, also called thumb drives, USB drives, flash drives, memory sticks, and a number of other names. They are all about the same, regardless of name used. These devices are great for short-term backups and for transporting data from one computer to another. Want to copy data from your desktop to the laptop computer? Use a jump drive. Want to copy data from your cousin's genealogy database and take it home with you? Use a jump drive.

I suggest that every computer-owning genealogist should own at least one of these tiny devices. You can purchase one for less than five dollars.

See http://www.google.com/cse?cx=003715150024579880844%3Aulyzue1ivzu&ie=UTF-8&q=%22thumb+drive%22&sa=Search for some of my past articles about jump drives.

Almost everything in the computer world drops in price rapidly, but jump drive prices seem to drop even faster than other hardware. I recently purchased a 32-gigabyte jump drive at a local computer store for $59.95. That's the equivalent storage space of more than 22,000 floppy disks and also more capacity than 48 CD-ROM disks. One 32-gigabyte jump drive can even store six or seven full-length movies without compression, even more if you compress the files first. Not bad for a device that is smaller than a tube of lipstick!

I remember that one of my first thumb drives stored 32 megabytes (that's megabytes, not gigabytes), and I thought that the storage capacity was amazing. I forget the price but suspect it was in the $20 to $40 range. Now four-gigabyte thumb drives sell for eight dollars, (see http://www.rootsbooks.com/shop.php?i=B000NWVAFO for one example and you can find others) and prices go up as storage capacities increase.

My new 32-gigabyte thumb drive stores 1,000 times as much data as the first one I owned. I keep copies of my genealogy data, newsletter articles, several thousand photographs, checkbook information for the past year, all of the PowerPoint presentations I have made in the past six years, a word processor, an e-mail program, several computer games, and more on the jump drive. Even so, I have nearly 20 gigabytes of empty space still available. I do encrypt the more sensitive information in case I lose the jump drive and some stranger recovers it. However, most of the other data is a simple copy made from the various computers I use.

The $59.95 I paid for a 32-gigabyte drive is about the most cost-effective price today for a jump drive when calculated on a per gigabyte basis ($1.87 per gigabyte of storage). Low storage capacity jump drives sell for five dollars or less but typically do not approach the $1.87 per gigabyte price point. I have seen 64- and 128-gigabyte jump drives advertised but at rather high prices. The size of 32 gigabytes seems to be the most cost-effective. Of course, all that will probably change again within a few weeks as prices continue to plummet.

I love thumb drives for short-term storage – that is, storing data for a few weeks or months. However, the technology is so new that the manufacturers are not making any claims about how long the data will be preserved on a jump drive. I wouldn't trust one of these for long-term storage of a year or longer. I do think they are ideal for keeping a backup of your current data and then making new backups frequently. Almost all of today's Windows and Macintosh genealogy programs will back up data directly to a jump drive.

Have you backed up your genealogy data? If not, pick up a jump drive for five bucks or more at the local drug store, department store, or at any computer store.

Comments

[Bob Schlachter]

I agree. Jump drives are great. I have a few of them. I found a 4gb drive for $10 a couple of years ago and have another 2 gb drive as a spare. I use the 4gb as additional backup for my genealogy software. The 2gb drive I take to the library to download data I find through their websites instead of printing it out. This saves time and the cost of printing them out, especially when there is a limit on free copies. It's also easier to edit the jpeg files once you get them home.

[Andrew Peake]

Not so long ago I was impressed by a 25MB flash drive given away by a drug company. It is interesting to see prices in the US, in Australia a 4 GB is $21US as compared to $8US and a 16GB is $81US. Obviously price reductions are just around the corner.
Andrew Peake, Adelaide, Australia

[Dave Dobbin]

Very small drives are now being given away as promo items - one insurance company I know is giving away a 256K drive with every quote. Alright, so it's not a lot, but as an emergency standby it is useful for transferring between PCs. I look forward to larger drives being available FoC in the near future!

[Donde Smith]

Does this one come with the ability to hand around your neck? For some of us that's the only way to hang on to it ;-) I do have several for dedicated uses, and I love them I watch the specials emailed each week from some large electronic stores

[Claire Bettag]

Any ideas on the quality of the free ones now being given away in "goody bags" at conferences, parties, etc.? They are small (1gb or a bit larger) but I've used them for temporary storage and none has yet failed. But I do wonder if there are massive quantities of these being produced shabbily. Thanks for any insight on this.

Claire Bettag

[Dae Powell]

Bob, you and I think alike. Our library has microfilm and microfiche readers that will digitize the images. I offload them to my USB drives, saving me the expense of a paper copy and retaining the ability to crop the images for my own purposes.

USB drive REIGN! Check my web site for more bargains.

Happy Dae·
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com

[Clay N]

Within the last month, I actually received a 16GB drive free -- but as a incentive from a computer business software company. I also have several additional drives for various uses.

I use one (currently 4GB)drive to store current versions of important and frequently updated data. It is also used to transfer and keep up to date key files on three separate PCs that I use (work desktop, home desktop, and laptop).

Since all media can fail or be accidently lost or destroyed, I use three (currently 16GB) drives on a rotation basis to monthly backup the data files on all three PCs. [Also, as additional backup, I write the data to DVDs every 6 months. For the desktops, there are also USB connected large hard drives that automatically mirror/backup the internal hard drives.] These drives are stored in physically separate locations.

I also have a couple smaller and older drives that are used as 'scratch' drives for trading files with others or for use in common PCs (such as in conference rooms for large screen display use).

[Dae Powell]

Clay, that is a solid method of backing up! Good for you -- we must be related. LOL I also use Carbonite, online storage.

Happy Dae·

[Bob Strock]

When buying a USB drive one fact that is often hidden is the transfer speed. Higher priced drives some times reflect a better transfer speed. Windows Vista memory can be helped by use of "ReadyBoost" which requires a higher speed drive. Maybe some one can point to more on this topic. Which you may already have in the link that I didn't check yet.

[Ruby Dusek]

I love my flash drives--my first was 128MB bought on sale for $50 down from $75! My only problem is knowing what I have saved on each one without putting in in a USB drive on the computer. That was one advantage of using a floppy or CD. Any suggestions?

[Kip Sperry]

A related topic of interest is the brand name of dependable flash drives. I use a 16 GB Kingston (Data Traveler) flash drive for Word documents, photos, PowerPoint slide shows, etc., and have plenty of room for more. In addition, I also use a 320 GB Western Digital drive to transfer data from my computer at work to my computer at home. I also have another Western Digital back up drive in my safety deposit box in the bank. And, of course, it is essential to keep back ups on your hard drive and external drive as well. That should be enough back ups for a few more years, until new technology comes along.

[Alice McCabe]

When you back up a genealogy file, must you first have installed the program (FTM, BK or other)on the stick drive> If si, hiow do you do it?
Alice

[Peggy Baldwin]

The point should be made that jump drives should never be called Memory Sticks. Memory Stick is a proprietary name for Sony's memory media, and is like SD, xD picture card, CompactFlash, and other storage media. It is not another name for a jump drive. See the following Wikipedia page for a picture of what a Memory Stick looks like and for more info about it -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_Stick.

[Shon R. Edwards]

I love mine. I always keep two of the same size, because they are so huge. I keep a backup of one on the other and then back them up at home on my desktop every couple of days. The one I'd suggest would be the Corsair Flash Voyager, 64 GB on Amazon. When I initially bought my two, I got them for around $70 each, if I remember correctly, but the price has increased, unfortunately, to more than double that, from the time I got my two. Still, I'd rather have something with that kind of capacity and would still get one in a heartbeat if I needed a replacement.

[Shon R. Edwards]

In response to Alice McCabe's question, no it's not necessary to have a program on a flash drive to either to copy a GEDCOM file (a genealogical information-type file that all genealogy programs should read) or a proprietary data file (the data file that each program uses to store the genealogical data, which CAN'T be read by other programs). You can store both of these types of files on a flash drive. On the other hand, it is possible to install your genealogy program to the drive and also store your data on it. But I wouldn't recommend it, unless you keep your master elsewhere, as these drives are more intended for temporary storage.

[Shon R. Edwards]

Claire, I've owned probably around 10 of these. Even the big-name brand drives can fail. Some problems you can encounter are that when you go to save on the drive, the file gets deleted, with the only copy being what's on your screen. It's pretty easy to re-save and then it works fine again. This is particularly true with Corsair drives. I've had some big-name ones go bad on me. One thing that really kills them is to pull them out without clicking on the green arrow to "Safely Remove Hardware". I even had a hard drive once that someone just pulled out of my computer without clicking on the arrow and it completely ruined the HD from that moment forward. Sometimes I've shut down all my programs and I still can't remove the hardware. In that case, I shut down the computer and pull it out. I'm not sure of what, if any effects, there are from doing this.

[Patswisha]

Ruby, I am a bit late replying to you on this topic, have been away and only just catching up with my mail.
I have several jump drives and also looked for a way to record what data was on them. First, I give all my jump drives a name. When viewing the contents, use shift and print screen then paste to a blank word document, with the name of the drive printed at the top. This you can print out or save in a specially created folder on your desktop. On the printed copy you can cross off anything that you have deleted, but the saved copy cannot be altered the only option being to make a new copy. Hope this is of some help.
Patswisha.