I remember that awkward period after we outgrew floppies but before USB flash storage became mainstream when CD-RW and CD+RW (Yes there was a difference and it mattered!) being peddled as the next portable storage format. My first USB stick was 128 megabytes and cost around $60. I actually still have it, but it may no longer work. I believe I bought it in around 2003 or 2004. I remember them steadily decreasing in price, or at least price per unit storage, very quickly over the ensuing years, to the point where they were giving away multi-gig sticks by around 2009 or 2010.
My dad would go to tech things and one time he excitedly brought a handful of them back. I thiiink they were 2gb? He gave me one and I remember basically being like idk why I would ever need this. A year later I was in college and boy did that little guy come in handy. Especially after I had a failing hard drive that refused to boot into windows so I used the USB to boot Ubuntu and recover my data.
I bought my first flash drive on sale for $12, a whopping 512mb. Fuck if I knew what to do with it at the time but I liked that I could carry cool pics and links to my favorite flash games with me. It wasn’t long after that I got my second, 2. fucking. gigs. Brought the entirety of Diablo 2 and a few Pokemon ROMs home from my uncle on that bad boy. Used it to put XBMC on an original Xbox. Got into Pirate video thanks to that thing. Still have it to this day, think it still has my d&d 3.5 collection on it.
The one I miss most though, tasteful little orange steel swing design. Wore it at all times as a necklace because it had this minimalist jewelry vibe. I had a live Ubuntu boot and ftp client on it, filled the whole drive, but I could boot into that instead of most computers and remote home to access my computer. Blew a lot of minds in highschool with that. Accidentally left it plugged into a computer on the last day before graduation and never got a chance to go back for it. I’d kill for 128gb or higher with that same external design, but you can’t find them from reputable places these days.
CD only had -RW, it was DVD that had -RW and +RW variants.
My dad worked at a semi-conductor plant when I was growing up, and regularly went to SemiCon and he’d give my siblings and I all the rando swag from booths he got. Mostly pens or keychains, but every once in a while there would be some cool tech toy like a laser pointer, an electronic business card (reprogramable for your personal stuff), and toward the end before they closed the plant, low capacity thumbdrives. Had to have been around 2000 or 2001 when I first used one. They were hella new at the time.
Maybe around 2003? It was a weird little device that was also an MP3 player. It had a headphone jack, play/pause/next/prev, and that was it. Was like 128mb and played mp3s in order they were written to the device, I think.
I thought it was really cool, but maybe not my best purchase.
I’m pretty sure that was just how mp3 players came back then.
was it a nomad muvo?
To install Linux on a computer in my basement.
Edit: Oops, that was the last time.
The first time?
Yup. Oops.
Can’t remember the first time for sure, but it was likely for a Linux install as well.
It was 2012 and 2 or 4 GB, I believe. I was in elementary school, and my school didn’t allow students to bring electronics from home. So when we had the chance to hang out at each other’s homes on weekends, my friends and I used to share pirated video games and movies with one another using flash drives or CDs. That was the only way to enjoy video games and movies at the time, as we didn’t have proper internet access.
I never used floppy disks myself, but I saw my older brother use them when I was a toddler. I wasn’t allowed near computers back then for obvious reasons, unlike the “iPad kids” these days. So technically, I never experienced the transition, lol.
Flash drives were still relatively expensive here, and I had to borrow my brother’s if I needed one. They cost around 1k/GB in our currency, as far as I can remember.
I remember when we called those little USB devices dongles. And before flash drives, there were Zip drives. We’ve come a long way from floppy disks!
Some USB devices are still called “dongles”. USB Bluetooth and Wi-Fi dongles, for example.
I remember it was 8MB.
I had zip disks with more storage so I hated using it since even at the time it was small, but, needed to get files to/from school and 8MB compared to a floppy was crazy huge!
I used 5.25" floppies on my family’s Commodore 64 in the '80s. 3.5" floppies were still required for college in the year 2000. It was depressing.
Skipped Zip, never used them until a couple years ago, but I do remember my cousin swapping music with his friends on Zip disks. MPEG-2? It was a few years before anyone had heard of mp3s or Napster.
I still have a 4MB SmartMedia card and a 16MB SD card in my collection.
I think it was 1987, but we called them floppy discs at the time.
I had an mp3 player in 2003 that was basically just a usb stick with a minijack, two buttons, and a volume control. When inserted into what was essentially a battery case, it worked as an mp3 player. When inserted into my PC it worked as a USB drive. I loved the simplicity, and in a pinch I could use it for other files too.
128MB, iirc
I had a similar one. The earphones it came with were specifically designed to act as a strap as well so you can hang the mp3 player around your neck.
I had one of these
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbtSLaxP1sc2002
I had a 32 MB one I bought for about $35.
I also had a 32 MB MP3 player. That was considered adequate, but not “a lot” at the time.
Every time I flash Linux or a BIOS update onto a new computer. I can’t think of another use case other than OS installs. Most file transfers are easier through the cloud and if it’s really large where that would be slow/expensive/inconvenient then you’re usually using a hard drive or ssd.
I think it was 16MB or 32MB.
I had put a 3.5" floppy drive in the machine that I used it on, as well as years of successor computers, plus CD-Rs, so I had alternatives for sneakernet for years.
I’ve had it in my desk for decades and occasionally use it. It’s pretty slow and small, but for many files, that’s fine. Never had any shennanigans from it.
I think that the move to USB-C is going to finally kill it, though. I’ve got a 128GB USB-C drive that I carry with me now.
