Peripherals Cheap flash drives from China for installing Windows?

I don't have an optical drive, and I have the digital version of Windows 8. Would a cheap flash drive such as

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-8GB-8...19?pt=US_USB_Flash_Drives&hash=item232347ea8b

be okay? I have exactly £3.34 to spend inc. delivery to the UK. (Paypal...)


EDIT : Just realized that that product is from the US, but you get the idea

 

Have you looked at UK online retailers, you could get one in a few days free delivery Im sure rather than from the US.

 

Corsair do some awesome flash drives, and you can get refurb ones at Scan for just a couple of quid more. Especially if you just need 8GB. There's an 8GB and a 16GB one for the same price (5.57GBP) at the moment:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-...0mb-s-write-13mb-s-cmfvy3s-8gb-rf-refurbished
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb...b-20-refurbished-cmfusb20-16gb-rf-refurbished

The 8GB is a USB3 drive and they both come with a 30 day warranty.

 

It depends what you want to do with it, but it's a flash drive, it'll be fine. Just don't expect a warranty like you'd get with any of the bigger brands.

additionally, don't expect anything particularly speedy. It'll be slow. It's certainly an area where you get what you pay for.

 

Hah, I definitely would like to buy a slightly better flash drive, but transferring money to my paypal takes 7 days and my SSD is going to arrive pretty soon.

 

Delivery from Hong Kong will take way more than 7 days...

 

Hmm, any good UK stores for this kinda stuff then?

 

Apparently it only needs to be 3GB to install Windows, should be able to find a 4GB drive somewhere.

 

Be wary of cheap USB thumb drives from the far east. There are plenty of dodgy ones out there that are basically wee drives (say 2GB) that have been hacked to "appear" as larger capacity drives (so your 2GB drive shows up in Windows as say, 32GB). I know a few people who've been stung by these - you only discover that there's a problem when you try to fill the drive beyond it's true capacity.

 

Plenty of 4GB Sandisk Cruzers going for £2-3 inc. delivery. Might just go for that.

 

Yeah, they's be fine.

 

Just as a side note, refurbished keys? How much use will they have had?

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

Just bought

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transcend-T...1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1357079770&sr=1-3

On eBay for £3.28 (4p under budget ). Funny how I spent £125 on the SSD, but spent twenty minutes trying to find a flash drive under £3.34

Edit : That should have at least 3GB useable space, right?

 

It'll vary on circumstance of sending the flash drive back, it's basically a repair from Corsair that's been returned to Scan. You don't know how much usage it had or what happened to it.

 

been stung , twice , now buying refurbed products - never again.

btw this thread reminds me - need to get a USB3 flash drive - 16gb is hard work on my slow as heck usb2 stick

 

I ordered this a few days ago, it's a usb 3.0 flash drive but apparently maxes out read speed on USB 2.0 ports according to one of the customer images. You'd seldom get that with a usb 2.0 flash drive! Most of them are a joke, they probably cheapen their parts so it don't even fully utilise a usb 2.0 port like an external HD would.

 

As long as the USB flash drive is faster than your optical drive in data transfer of large and small files, it will install Windows in a few minutes. If not, then I hope you are patient. As it takes time to extract the ISO to your USB key, make it bootable, then install Windows. In such case, just use an optical drive.

If the read and write speed aren't mentioned, then you know the numbers are really bad. Avoid.

 

cheers for the lnik - believe it or not thats the one i have in my own amazon basket

thank you

 

Anyone have an Idea of where to obtain old, small flash drives?
Anything from 32MB upto 2GB?

I was hoping someone would sell a bag of them on ebay, but nope..

 

Get in contact with any large corporation. Most marketing departments hand them out like candy. Or if you have a convention center near you, just go there when there is a convention. There is usually large baskets of USB plugs.