USB Flash Drive Capacity

[artbuc]

I have less than 30GB I need to back-up. Can I get a USB Flash drive with sufficient capacity to do this? I'm not sure how much of the advertised storage is actually available.  Could I put 30 GB of files on a 32 GB USB Flash drive?

[Computer_Commando]

I have less than 30GB I need to back-up. Can I get a USB Flash drive with sufficient capacity to do this? I'm not sure how much of the advertised storage is actually available.  Could I put 30 GB of files on a 32 GB USB Flash drive?

It will be very close & may not all fit.  Also, 32GB flash drives are rather expensive.  For your requirements, you may wish to consider a USB hard drive.  A 320GB drive will be about the same price as a 32GB flash drive.

[truenorth]

Other things to consider. Is the data you wish to archive (store)is going to remain static (for example photos) or is it data you will want to periodically access and modify? If it is static A few DVD's would be a very inexpensive way to go. As to a 32gb flash drive they are readily available and should set you back about $40.00 U.S. However if you can split the data there are frequent sales on 4-8 gb units that can almost be giveaway prices. A flash drive usually purchased online is generally much cheaper than in a store (but not always) In the U.S. Best Buy,Fry's and other similar stores often feature sales on them. I have a 64gb drive i purchased about a year ago at Fry's for $23.00 so they are out there. The place to be VERY careful is E-Bay or other online auction sites as there are known frequent scams there ie: offering 32 gb or whatever and when you get them they are much less perhaps 4 gb. Also an external HDD is another option. For the size you need they would probably be cheaper than a similar size flash drive.Also the advantage of that is if you buy an external HDD of say 100 gb you will have capacity for the time you realize you need to store more plus it is portable from one computer to another and also can be stored off-site for security and safety considerations. truenorth

[Salmon Trout]

Most manufacturers of hard disk drives and flash-memory disk devices define 1 gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes so a 32 GB flash drive will have a capacity of 32,000,000,000 bytes. However filesystems define 1 gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes, so 30 GB of files would occupy 32,212,254,720 bytes, so they might not fit.