USB Drive Vs. SD/MMC Card Reader

Sweetchuck

Need a bit of advice for portable digital storage here, chaps.

I've just sold my 1GB Belkin USB drive to a pal who was afraid of buying online.

I now need to replace this, as I can't imagine working without a USB drive (or equivalent).

However, I have a USB Mp3 player (one of the 1GB Medion ones seen on here recently) which also has a slot for SD and MMC cards. I'm paranoid about accidentally breaking my USB drive and losing all of the data contained on it (as far as I'm aware, there's no way of recovering data from a broken USB drive) and so I was thinking about buying a 1GB SD or MMC card to plug into my Medion Mp3 player and use that as my digital storage (work documents etc).

Any advice on whether or not this would be a good move? Although my old USB drive and Medion Mp3 player are both USB 2.0, transfer speeds on the Belkin were significantly higher than on the Medion. Would this be the same for an SD or MMC card in the Medion unit?

I know that there's not much price difference these days between USB and SD/MMC storage so price isn't really a factor. However, I'd like to have fast transfer speeds and the ability to recover data if something goes wrong with the USB unit, whether as a standalone USB drive or as an SD/MMC card reader.

Weth

Personally,I would go the SD card route.With 1 GB cards coming in at under £20 I just find the storage extremely flexible,with a few SD cards, whether for keeping my entire album collection on,porting files across to PDA or to PC,photos etc.I tend to carry a dedicated reader but as your MP3 player supports it you don't even need that.
As far as transfer speeds go,unless you're constantly transferring huge files I wouldn't have considered that an issue.As far as the recovery factor goes,unless the USB drive was physically damaged ,as in the port was snapped off recovery should be just as likely as with an SD card.

Little_John

There is not really any diference between data recovery from a memory card and data recovery from a USB flash drive. its always a possibilty as long as the person doing it knows what they are doing, if the board inside breaks on a memory card its pretty much knackered and the same with a flash drive.

Buy a new flash drive and be carefull with it, make a backup ocasionally I do with mine and copy everything off and format it I usually recover space too I cant be bothered stopping the device.

albertross_2

If the data is important back it up to CD or DVD. They are a safer medium than a solid state device.

fairytooth

Definitely a good move, SD cards extremely cheap (£17.99 at directfoto) and USB readers unbelievably cheap (LEDShoppe) i.e. £3 delivered free from Hong Kong !!!!

Sweetchuck

Many thanks, guys.

Does anyone know if transfer rates to SD/MMC cards compare favourably with direct USB transfer? My old USB drive had fantastic transfer speeds, but I've already noticed a dramatic decrease in speed when copying to my USB Mp3 player.

I regularly copy 400-500MB of data between desktops and laptops, so transfer speed and safety are more of a priority than cost.