I'm finding myself with more and more USB flash drives for installing various OSes, etc. On my network, I also have a PXE boot setup, but some times it is just easier to grab a usb stick and plug it in. I usually just grab whatever I have available, but as USB drives get larger and larger, I find it wasteful to dd a <500MB ISO image to a 16GB or larger USB flash drive. Also, I've started to label them, as I've got a box full of them and noticed I was wasting too much time plugging them into my laptop one after another hunting for the one I needed. This made me realize the tiny "fit" drives are not ideal, as it's hard to put any label on them. Ironically, the older/larger USB drives have more surface to stick a label on.
Another factor, I find that USB 2.0 flash drives are more stable. I've encountered several instances where a USB 3.0 drive resets itself or the bus and some installer programs don't handle that kind of event well; requiring to start over again.
So, the ideal seems to be: 1 or 2GB in capacity (maybe 16GB for Windows), USB 2.0, and large enough to stick a label on them... so, do you guys have a preferred brand/model of USB drives you use for bootable OS installers? The smaller USB 2.0 drives seem to cost more per gigabyte which encourages me to want to buy the larger drives, but then it feels wasteful. Didn't really care back in the days when it was still common to burn installers to CD-R or DVD+R discs, as they were often less than a quarter; even small capacity USB drives are still more costly...
Another factor, I find that USB 2.0 flash drives are more stable. I've encountered several instances where a USB 3.0 drive resets itself or the bus and some installer programs don't handle that kind of event well; requiring to start over again.
So, the ideal seems to be: 1 or 2GB in capacity (maybe 16GB for Windows), USB 2.0, and large enough to stick a label on them... so, do you guys have a preferred brand/model of USB drives you use for bootable OS installers? The smaller USB 2.0 drives seem to cost more per gigabyte which encourages me to want to buy the larger drives, but then it feels wasteful. Didn't really care back in the days when it was still common to burn installers to CD-R or DVD+R discs, as they were often less than a quarter; even small capacity USB drives are still more costly...