DVD or Flash Drive?

[Nick Griffin]

Any opinions on which brand(s) of jump/stick/USB drives are the most reliable?

We’ve been using, what I assume to be, the high end Lexar drives and yes, re-formatting them before using them.

We’ve also seen failures with, again what I assume to be, the cheap drives that are used as give-aways at trade shows.

So, in the opinions of this esteemed group any brands you recommend for and/or against?

[Grinner Hester]

Yes. They part where you explain to them the price difference. 🙂

[John Beech]

Distilled into a format playable on their iPad . . . to show how far behind the times I am, ‘this’ caught my attention. A little more on the subject would be appreciated. Also, does it have to be loaded through iTunes, or can it be placed directly on iPhone/iPad through the local WiFi from the NAS?

[Leah Chapman]

There’s another factor to consider when comparing the cost between DVDs and USBs: time.

For playable DVDs, you need to export it, author it, write the DVD, print the DVD, check the DVD, etc. As fast as we are as a shop, we can’t do all that in under 30 minutes. Sometimes it takes an hour. Even data DVDs require time to build and time to print.

For USB drives, we have a standard “ReadMe.txt” file with instructions. We just load that and the videos onto the drive, and the whole thing can be done in 5 minutes.

So for us, the capital outlay is greater for USB drives, but we save considerably on man-hours. Totally worth it.

Leah Chapman
fivespotmedia.com