USB memory stick: what brand, model is best?

[verbum-qazKcTl6WRFWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org]

I hope to go shopping 2006-02-20 in 
the vicinity of the U of Toronto downtown campus 
for a USB memory stick, as an accessory   
for my Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 "Sarge" workstation. 
The workstation is implemented with hardware 
that was new in the year 2000 (ASUS motherboard 
with two USB sockets labelled "RJ-45"). 
A stick capacity of at least 512 MB would be nice. 

Awkwardly, I don't have any experience with USB memory sticks, 
and SOME caution evidently has to be exercised when shopping; 
*a____Jason Shein  on this list reported on 2005-04-08  
      finding problems with Kingston 512mb Data Traveller
*b____Lennart Sorensen  on this list said on 2005-06-21 that 
      ((QUOTE)) 
        there are lots of usb-storage 
        compatible memory sticks for usb
        and almost all of them 
        do work with linux just fine.  Some are
        much better designed than others though.
      ((/QUOTE)) 

Can anyone make a shopping recommendation?  
Advice on brands and models would be welcome, 
esepcially from anyone succesfully
using a USB stick with Debian 3.1 "Sarge". 


Sincerely, 


Tom Karmo 
+1 416-971-6955 
verbum-qazKcTl6WRFWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org
http://www.metascientia.com 
ham callsign (esp 442.975 MHz Wednesdays 20:00 EST) VA3KMZ



PS:  For what it's worth, I'll append here my rough research
notes from  http://www.linuxcompatible.org: 
  ((ROUGH_NOTES))
    __Sandisk Cruzer USB Mini FlashDrive 512MB
      (_vendor = Sandisk) 
      __((QUOTE))
          Sandisk Cruzer USB Mini FlashDrive 512MB, Model
          SDCZ2-512-A10 No problems, preloaded with fat16 filesystem
        ((/QUOTE)) 
    __DataTraveler USB flash memory drive
      (_vendor = Kingston) 
      __((QUOTE)) 
          It works perfectly. I followed the instructions in the
          Flash Memor y HowTo
          http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Flash-Memory-HOWTO/index.html). I've
          had no problem.
        ((/QUOTE)) 
    __MPIO HS100 1.5G USB Storage
      (_vendor = DigitalWay) 
      __((QUOTE)) 
          Works perfectly out of the box. I just plugged it into
          the USB port and Suse Linux 9.0 Pro recognized it and an icon
          appeared on the KDE desktop. Mounts/Unmount, Read/Write
          perfectly fine. No issues.
    __Netac Bootable Pro USB Pen Drive
      (_vendor = Netac) 
      __((QUOTE)) 
          Works great. 
        ((/QUOTE)) 
    __Samsung MP3 USB Stick 128MB
      (_vendor = Samsung) 
      __((QUOTE)) 
          It works, but sometimes not. USB Hotplug sometimes
          can't mount the stick. Trying again after disconnecting it is
          the solution.
        ((/QUOTE)) 
    __SanDisk Cruzer Micro 512 MB
      (_vendor = SanDisk) 
      __((QUOTE)) 
          Linux will not read the device when it is plugged in
          and there is no way to access it.
        ((/QUOTE)) 
      __((QUOTE))
          This device works great using Slackware 10.0 and Linux
          kernel 2.6.10.
        ((/QUOTE)) 
    __SanDisk ImageMate Compact Flash USB
      (_vendor = SanDisk) 
      __((QUOTE)) 
          Debian GNU/Linux :
          hotplugging does not work, so everytime you have inserted a
          compact flash card you have to initialize the device:
            modprobe usb-storage
            mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
     __Tweakmonster USB Key Chain Drive
       (_vendor = Tweakmonster) 
       __((QUOTE)) 
           Mount the drive with: 
           mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbkey -t vfat
         ((/QUOTE)) 
  ((/ROUGH_NOTES))      				
          			


--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml