Need Tiny USB Thumb Drives

J

jasonlitka

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Mar 12, 2001
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Has anyone seen USB drives that are the same size as the Bluetooth adapter at the link below?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833242003

I don't need a lot of capacity, 1-2GB would be fine, but I need to be able to get it into the front USB port on a Dell PE2900 and still have the metal face place installed.

I've seen ones that stick out about 3/4 of an inch (like this one) but those are pushing it. I've also used those ones that don't have the metal shield around the contacts (like this one) but I don't like them because they don't have that "secure" feeling and tend to wobble around a bit.

Can anyone help me out?
 
Yeah, that's the one I linked to (except in 4GB rather than 8GB); I don't like how it just sits inside your USB port on top of the contacts, rather than having the full metal shield around it.

One thing I did find was a MicroSD card plus USB adapter. If I get rid of the plastic shield and strap this looks to be the right size. Does anyone know if I'll be able to boot from a device like this (assuming that the system could boot from a normal USB thumb drive)?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134496

EDIT: Part of this reply doesn't make sense because Ockie edited his post.
 
What are you trying to accomplish? Generally if you are making a diskless server you either PXE boot them or use an iSCSI HBA.
 
Ockie said:
There is a even tinier one out there but I dont remember where I saw it.
Click to expand...

I did the math on these and it looks like they're about 2.6cm long which means that they should stick out about 1.5cm from the front of the case. That puts me at about 0.6" so it should fit fine, although if you should remember where you saw a smaller one that would be even better.

Lazn_Work said:
What are you trying to accomplish? Generally if you are making a diskless server you either PXE boot them or use an iSCSI HBA.
Click to expand...

I want to install ESXi on them, that way I can just move the install to a different machine if one takes a dive. It's much easier than dealing with internal drives, even swappable ones.

I considered using iSCSI to boot ESXi (since I'll be using a Dell MD3000i for storage anyway and Intel Server NICs now support booting from iSCSI) but I've read in quite a few places that ESXi will not work if you try to boot from an iSCSI HBA. As to PXE, it's been years since I've done that and I honestly don't remember enough to get it working.
 
That makes sense. The Lexar Firefly drives are pretty small for ones with the full metal around them. Otherwise that one Calanthe suggested looks pretty cewl.
 
Dont know if you're still looking, but wouldn't a usb extension dongle work, so you could just fold it sideways and stick a full size flash drive in sideways behind the bezel?

Not sure about the newer servers but my 1650 cant fit the bezel on with my Logitech Nano receiver plugged in which is smaller than any flash drive you're going to find. It's because of the connector for the front LED indicators.
 
I actually bought the microSD ones first but they didn't work properly. 3 out of 6 had bad blocks and the other three wouldn't boot reliably (more on this in a minute).

As replacements I bought the Super Talent Pico (2GB). These had a similar booting issue as the MicroSD, although they did work more often (1 in 10 boot failures rather than 1 in 3). The solution to that issue was the Lexar BootIt! utility that lets you flip the Removable/Fixed bit on some flash drives. Once I flipped them to "Fixed" they started working 100% of the time.
 
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