Cheapest USB Key Drives/Memory Sticks: 4GB under £9

isofa

Should be fine, Windows 98SE has usb support built it. You'll need to ensure it's formatted to FAT rather than NTFS, but it'll come like that anyway.

weegie.geek

I got one of these today. Haven't done write speed tests, but read speed averages at 14.8MB/sec.

Not the cheapest at £5.50 for 2GB but slow flash drives are a pain.

crociatolaw

ebuyer currently have one for £8.32 inc vat

I have on pretty good authority that this price will go below £9.00 for the kingston 4gb datatraveller usb flash drive too, once they know somone is beating their price.

Which I shall tell them about.........

espresso

ih8stress wrote: »

Does anyone know if the Play.com 4GB USB flash drive (£8.99 delivered) can be used with Windows 98SE?

I've tried looking at some of the reviews on their site without success

I doubt that it will work unless you can get the correct driver for it, Stick to Kingston or another make that does supply drivers.

isofa

tryfive wrote: »

FWIW, there's a neat piece of software at:
http://www.sdean12.org/USBFlashTools.htm which can automatically determine the real capacity of a USB flash drive (or memory cards like SD cards, compact flash cards, etc) and reports if you've been sold a fake or not. VERY useful if you buy anything like this of ebay!

Or you could use the excellent, and free, PC Wizard from CPUID, which can check and report on every hardware item in your system, and a whole lot more besides

xiox

isofa wrote: »

Should be fine, Windows 98SE has usb support built it. You'll need to ensure it's formatted to FAT rather than NTFS, but it'll come like that anyway.

Sorry - you're wrong - Windows ME can access USB drives natively, but 98SE can't. You need additional drivers in 98.

eddie_2-2

I bought one of the £8.99 4gb USB memory sticks from Play.com.
However whenever I try to use mine on my Windows XP laptop I keep getting a message to format it.
It is already formatted with an FAT file system.
If I try to reformat it says Windows can't do it.
What's going on?
Can anyone offer some advice?

Thanks.

satrianez

eddie wrote: »

I bought one of the £8.99 4gb USB memory sticks from Play.com.
However whenever I try to use mine on my Windows XP laptop I keep getting a message to format it.
It is already formatted with an FAT file system.
If I try to reformat it says Windows can't do it.
What's going on?
Can anyone offer some advice?

Thanks.

Try it in another PC (at work, with a friend or a neighbour), if it works fine there, the problem come from your laptop.
Boot your laptop with Linux Live CD (Knoppix) to see if it works.
If it does, the problem comes from your Windows installation and you may want to fix it or reinstall it.
If it doesn't, it might have to do with your usb port... a newer bios applied to your system board might fix it.

Also try formatting your key with this tool:
http://www.sdean12.org/USBFlashTools.htm

If all of the above fails, contact Play.com to get it replaced as DOA.

Hope that helped.

superscaper

TakeWare wrote: »

PPS Hope it's OK to post this here - if not please just let me know where to send it! Thanks.

It's pretty clearly stated in the forum rules, which you agreed to when you signed up for your account. No advertising. Before even thinking of doing so you should be contacting the abuse team (details also in the rules).

money_saver_mike

Man the prices on these things have gone down. My stick i got 2 years ago costed me £20 for 1GB. It's good though and I'm still using it!