5 ms·

Why are you even using physical media in the first place? The only reason I ever use flash drives nowadays is to format an operating system.

by butwhy 12y ago

josteink 12y ago
There's always use-cases. Here's one of mine: When you want to transfer files between two machines which (for whatever reason) can't be on the same network, and you don't want to install additional software into the environment. Depending on the files and the network involved, using a USB-stick (or any other physical media) can often be easier and faster than trying to find a network-bridge for your files.
tavish1 12y ago
steraming HD videos to your TV will certainly saturate the wifi bandwidth.
amolgupta 12y ago
1.data transfer cost 2.Online storage cost is more than physical media(almost) 3.Time
dagw 12y ago
Flash drives are still the quest and easiest way to get data between two random computers.
Sharlin 12y ago
Memory cards use FAT32 too. 4G fills up pretty quickly when shooting 4K video.
fla 12y ago
Siblings comments nailed it. Sometimes it's just the easiest solution. In the case of my tv, it doesn't support wireless, and installing cables is out of the question. There might be other ways, but honnestly I'm fine with copying bulk medias from to to time on a physical storage
- butwhy 12y ago
  Get a raspberry pi. ;)
ncza 12y ago
Because moving 5GB over a standard internet connection takes a while.
- butwhy 12y ago
  So why are you moving 5gb between PCs? Especially on a small flash drive rather than a portable harddrive (which comes formatted with a more appropriate file system to handle large files).
  - shabble 12y ago
    Does it really matter why? There are innumerable occasions you might have 5GB+ of data you want to quickly swap between machines. DVD images (especially OS install ones) spring to mind, and it's not uncommon to want the image itself, not to unpack onto your drive. Portable HDDs are bigger, more expensive, more fragile, and generally worse in every way (except transfer speeds) than USB flash drives for occasional short-haul data transfers. Writing 10G+ images onto a cheap 16G USB drive and throwing it across the office is a relatively common occurrence here.
    - butwhy 12y ago
      lol. I use NFS for "throwing [data] across the office". Faster than disk transfer and no physical media involved.
      - ncza 12y ago
        That's ok but you should also consider the use case of unconnected systems.
  - ncza 12y ago
    Why not? A usb stick is cheap, small and durable.
collyw 12y ago
Spoken like an Apple user. "Who uses cable Ethernet these days" - I had to twice in the past year - a hotel in Germany that provided internet via a cable. And when the router decided to loose the WIFI password and I had to use an old laptop to physically connect. I don't use USB sticks very often myself, but I am sure there are tons of scenarios where people find it useful. Just because it doesn't match any of your use cases is no justification.
- butwhy 12y ago
  Actually, it is a justification. That's why a bulti-million dollar company is releasing a macbook with no usb 2 port. Just because a certain demographic would make use of such a port, a large demographic wouldn't. Plus, they are looking into the future. For every year that passes, people will use less and less physical media. As for your ethernet example, that's too bad. Wifi capabilities will get better for every year that passes, too.
  - josteink 12y ago
    > As for your ethernet example, that's too bad. Wifi capabilities will get better for every year that passes, too. I beg to differ. I've gone from 802.11g to n to ac and I've yet to see any noticeable gains bringing me even close to plain old Gigabit ethernet. It cannot compete nor compare when it comes down to even individual aspects: reliability, individual throughput, total throughput (due to shared medium access), nor setup speeds. I'm not just talking "a little bit slower". I'm talking 1 minute guaranteed to succeed (ethernet), vs 1 hour guaranteed to fail (wifi). In real world performance, it's orders of magnitudes slower. That's measurable. That's a fact. For lots of use-cases wifi is utterly useless. Have fun trying to backup media to a iSCSI volume over wifi for instance. I'm guessing you don't live in a heavily populated area where the wifi-bands are over-consumed and have little more effective BW than 25mbps to offer. The same crap I was promised would improve half a decade ago. It haven't. A huge part of the tech-hungry power-users lives in these places and suffers through this subpar performance. We're not happy with mediocre wifi to cover our needs.
rakoo 12y ago
As always, XKCD explains it best: https://xkcd.com/949/ https://xkcd.com/949/

Why are you even using physical media in the first place? The only reason I ever use flash drives nowadays is to format an operating system.

by butwhy 12y ago

Why are you even using physical media in the first place? The only reason I ever use flash drives nowadays is to format an operating system.

josteink 12y ago

There's always use-cases. Here's one of mine: When you want to transfer files between two machines which (for whatever reason) can't be on the same network, and you don't want to install additional software into the environment. Depending on the files and the network involved, using a USB-stick (or any other physical media) can often be easier and faster than trying to find a network-bridge for your files.

tavish1 12y ago

steraming HD videos to your TV will certainly saturate the wifi bandwidth.

amolgupta 12y ago

1.data transfer cost 2.Online storage cost is more than physical media(almost) 3.Time

dagw 12y ago

Flash drives are still the quest and easiest way to get data between two random computers.

Sharlin 12y ago

Memory cards use FAT32 too. 4G fills up pretty quickly when shooting 4K video.

fla 12y ago

Siblings comments nailed it. Sometimes it's just the easiest solution. In the case of my tv, it doesn't support wireless, and installing cables is out of the question. There might be other ways, but honnestly I'm fine with copying bulk medias from to to time on a physical storage

butwhy 12y ago
Get a raspberry pi. ;)

ncza 12y ago

Because moving 5GB over a standard internet connection takes a while.

butwhy 12y ago
So why are you moving 5gb between PCs? Especially on a small flash drive rather than a portable harddrive (which comes formatted with a more appropriate file system to handle large files).
- shabble 12y ago
  Does it really matter why? There are innumerable occasions you might have 5GB+ of data you want to quickly swap between machines. DVD images (especially OS install ones) spring to mind, and it's not uncommon to want the image itself, not to unpack onto your drive. Portable HDDs are bigger, more expensive, more fragile, and generally worse in every way (except transfer speeds) than USB flash drives for occasional short-haul data transfers. Writing 10G+ images onto a cheap 16G USB drive and throwing it across the office is a relatively common occurrence here.
  - butwhy 12y ago
    lol. I use NFS for "throwing [data] across the office". Faster than disk transfer and no physical media involved.
    - ncza 12y ago
      That's ok but you should also consider the use case of unconnected systems.
- ncza 12y ago
  Why not? A usb stick is cheap, small and durable.

collyw 12y ago

Spoken like an Apple user. "Who uses cable Ethernet these days" - I had to twice in the past year - a hotel in Germany that provided internet via a cable. And when the router decided to loose the WIFI password and I had to use an old laptop to physically connect. I don't use USB sticks very often myself, but I am sure there are tons of scenarios where people find it useful. Just because it doesn't match any of your use cases is no justification.

butwhy 12y ago
Actually, it is a justification. That's why a bulti-million dollar company is releasing a macbook with no usb 2 port. Just because a certain demographic would make use of such a port, a large demographic wouldn't. Plus, they are looking into the future. For every year that passes, people will use less and less physical media. As for your ethernet example, that's too bad. Wifi capabilities will get better for every year that passes, too.
- josteink 12y ago
  > As for your ethernet example, that's too bad. Wifi capabilities will get better for every year that passes, too. I beg to differ. I've gone from 802.11g to n to ac and I've yet to see any noticeable gains bringing me even close to plain old Gigabit ethernet. It cannot compete nor compare when it comes down to even individual aspects: reliability, individual throughput, total throughput (due to shared medium access), nor setup speeds. I'm not just talking "a little bit slower". I'm talking 1 minute guaranteed to succeed (ethernet), vs 1 hour guaranteed to fail (wifi). In real world performance, it's orders of magnitudes slower. That's measurable. That's a fact. For lots of use-cases wifi is utterly useless. Have fun trying to backup media to a iSCSI volume over wifi for instance. I'm guessing you don't live in a heavily populated area where the wifi-bands are over-consumed and have little more effective BW than 25mbps to offer. The same crap I was promised would improve half a decade ago. It haven't. A huge part of the tech-hungry power-users lives in these places and suffers through this subpar performance. We're not happy with mediocre wifi to cover our needs.

rakoo 12y ago

As always, XKCD explains it best: https://xkcd.com/949/ https://xkcd.com/949/