Create image with USB

Frank1 · 13 Dec 2016

I have an HP laptop with 6 gig of RAM and 1 gig hard drive. I use an external hard drive to create an image which uses about 58 gig of space. I would like to use a USB instead of the hard drive. Can I get a USB big enough to make an image and if so, about how much would it cost. Thank you. -Frank

NocFA · 13 Dec 2016

@Frank1 Of course, you'll be looking to buy a 64gb stick I assume? They'll set you back about 15 pounds ($20) I'd recommend a SanDisk SDCZ50 B35 64 GB Cruzer as they're reliable and cheap you can also purchase them from Amazon Also, how do you only have 1gig of internal memory? I've never seen a laptop with 6gigs of ram and 1gig of memory.

cereberus · 13 Dec 2016

External usb flash drives are not as reliable as external usb drives. You are putting all your eggs in one basket.

fdegrove · 13 Dec 2016

Hi,

I've never seen a laptop with 6gigs of ram and 1gig of memory.

It's probably a typo. Most of these HP Pavillon laptops are outfitted with 500Gb drive or bigger.

External usb flash drives are not as reliable as external usb drives. You are putting all your eggs in one basket.

Having only the external drive would also be just one basket. Note that 1Gb amounts to a very small egg these days.

Cheers,

NavyLCDR · 13 Dec 2016

fdegrove said:

Having only the external drive would also be just one basket. Note that 1Gb amounts to a very small egg these days.

Cheers,

But at least it would be a much more reliable basket for storage of eggs than a USB flash drive would be.

fdegrove · 13 Dec 2016

Hi,

NavyLCDR said:

But at least it would be a much more reliable basket for storage of eggs than a USB flash drive would be.

Possibly, yes.
Never had any problem with flash drives failing on me. Some I have are over 10 years old and they're still fine.
Not favouring flash drive over external hard drives really bit that 1Gb drive is errr...funny.

Cheers,

Frank1 · 13 Dec 2016

NocFA said:

@Frank1 Of course, you'll be looking to buy a 64gb stick I assume? They'll set you back about 15 pounds ($20) I'd recommend a SanDisk SDCZ50 B35 64 GB Cruzer as they're reliable and cheap you can also purchase them from Amazon Also, how do you only have 1gig of internal memory? I've never seen a laptop with 6gigs of ram and 1gig of memory.

I might have made a typo on this. I'll double check it re-post tomorrow.

NavyLCDR · 13 Dec 2016

I'm thinking 1 TB. Although I did find an IDE hard drive in the basement that was 850 MB - from about 1990.

cereberus · 14 Dec 2016

Re. Backups. Point is you should have two independent backups. For really critical stuff even cloud backup (critical files only).

Flash drives and SD cards are less reliable. Using one flash drive only is Russian Roulette.

Me2 · 15 Dec 2016

cereberus said:

Re. Backups. Point is you should have two independent backups. For really critical stuff even cloud backup (critical files only).

Flash drives and SD cards are less reliable. Using one flash drive only is Russian Roulette.

I second cereberus's warnings.

About price: I think 64GB flash drives are around 15$-30$ on Amazon. The 64GB version of the Sandisk Extreme is AFAIK quite a bit faster than some other ones, but if you're only going to use this once in a long time - this might not be that important.