Memory sticks and discs- which are the best ones and from where?

needmoneyadvice

Thank you so much for replying. Think it's USB pen flash drive and CD discs needed. Basically for saving photos and general documents as a back up.

Any help greatly appreciated. Thank you.

superscaper

Well personally I wouldn't use a flash drive as a backup. They're useful for transferring data etc and having a mobile copy of data and apps. But they're not really designed for backing up and in my opinion they're not right for that (yet). By all means get one because they're useful and save stuff on them but don't use them as a primary backup (I backup stuff myself on them but very much a tertiary and temporary/convenience backup at best). Speaking as a consumer with a few of them and also speaking as a research engineer who's built concept flash devices. The technology is certainly getting to a very reliable stage but not to make it practical and economical as a backup medium (they're already coming in the ethusiast end of the market as fast replacements for hard drives but very expensive). There's a general sticky on backing up here http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=597170. As for CD, do you have a CD writer or DVD writer? Depending on how much you want to copy it may be better to use DVDs rather than CDs. But either way optical discs are a good longer term backing up solution. I quite like Verbatim discs as they're quite reliable. Obviously just buy CD Rs if they're just for backing up since they're cheaper, CD RWs are only worth it if you'll genuinely want to rewrite to the same discs.

Sput2001

OK, with USB drives in particular, the chances of getting a decent deal on the high street are very low. Don't even think about bothering with Comet, Currys or PC World.

try:

www.7dayshop.com
www.bigpockets.co.uk
www.svp.co.uk

micburnet

Why Did You say that we ought to avoid ebay and Amazon? I've always shopped at ebay and amazon without any hassles. I'm just curious.

NickMidgley wrote: »

In short, which type do you need and what are you using it for?

As a general rule, though, avoid ebay and Amazon marketplace sellers.

[IMG]http://!!!!!!!!!!/vynnson[/IMG]

superscaper

micburnet wrote: »

Why Did You say that we ought to avoid ebay and Amazon? I've always shopped at ebay and amazon without any hassles. I'm just curious.



[IMG]http://!!!!!!!!!!/vynnson[/IMG]

He didn't say avoid Amazon but third party sellers. The problem is that buying from third parties such as ebay and Amazon's marketplace is that you have to be so much more careful. So often people come on here to find that they were sold something of a much smaller capacity (the seller configures the formatting to appear a higher capacity than it is, e.g. sell a 4GB memory card as a 8GB memory card) and there seem to be much higher instances of them being cheaply made rubbish that corrupts easily. I'm not personally saying they're all like that but they're exactly where you find that kind of thing and Nick was probably just saving the OP time in the long term. You can get bargains from third parties and most are probably honest but you do have to put the work in first of all to ensure they're genuine to minimise the risk.

needmoneyadvice

Superscraper-just got a CD writer. Decided to look for Verbatim discs, thank you for your help.
Nick Midgley- have started checking out the websites you've mentioned-thank you very much for pointing me in the right direction.

Really appreciate all the help you've all given-definitely learnt a lot today, thank you.

Cat695

why not just buy another harddrive and save everything to that....then you don't have to worry about discs etc.....get an external one and you can take it anywhere with you

and if you look around you can get bloody cheap ones (i've seen harddrives cheaper than USB sticks)

needmoneyadvice

Cat 695-never thought of that-how much do the cheap ones cost approximately?

Cat695

well depends on the size....external or internal (internal are alot cheaper but you can buy and internal and make it external for about 20 pound extra)

also need to know how it will connect to your motherboard (ie IDE SATA or SATA2)

i'm taking it you have a PC not a laptop?

the cheapest place i have found is www.aria.co.uk (but watch their delivery prices as you pay a fortune for next day delivery etc)

20quid for an internal SATA2 (which will run on SATA) which is 160GB (which is approx 40 single layer DVD disc's)

or 19 quid for a 80GB IDE internal drive

aliEnRIK

I got a freebie usb stick off the front of a magazine. Its junk and never worked properly (Keeps getting corrupt)
Ive since bought a 4 gig and an 8 gig off ebay. I looked for the CHIPS that were inside them as opposed to the actual make. Both use SAMSUNG chips and both have been fine upto now