What memory devoce do I need?

[LoopyLoopsPussInBoots]

I need to get something to save documents etc - am starting a PhD. I'll be using a combination of my laptop, home PC and uni computers. Will a memory stick be enough? What are those bigger things?

oops! device

Amazon are selling this sort of thing:
www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Cruzer-Blade-16GB-Memory/dp/B00422DCB6

That's just over £10 for 16GB, which I'd imagine would be enough for most things. But it does depend on exactly what you're up to. 16GB is a whole lot of Word Documents, it's impossible to say how many as they vary enormously in size, look at some of your documents to assess how big they are.

On the other hand if you're making movies and dealing with digital video then it's not such a big amount of storage.

I wouldn't trust a memory stick alone for very important files, I've had a few break on me. So keep backups at all time and consider getting two of them and using both to move documents.

Ok thanks... so for a mix of word docs, photos, videos and music (say split equally for example) about how many could this contain. Sorry for being a dunce.

I would advise you never ever rely on a portable disk as your only means of storage.

It's ok if you are just transferring files from Uni to home etc. But always make sure you keep a copy on a computer.

The reason being is that USB drives tend to get lost or broken.

16GB is a lot of word docs and a fair amount of photos & music. Not a lot of videos though. But noone can give you a real estimate as it all depends on how long the videos/music are and how big the photos are.

I'd suggest starting with the device Badgers recommended and if that proves not enough, get yourself something more like this:

www.amazon.co.uk/Passport-Essential-Midnight-Black-Portable/dp/B004445JHC

Thank you :)

As a quick guide to sizing right click on a few of the files and/or folders that you are thinking of moving around and have a look at how big they are. It's very hard to say "oh a song/document/movie is going to be this big". It depends on so many variable factors. I think that even web sites like the Apple Store have given up about making claims on how many things you can fit onto each size iPod.

You could also consider some online backup service, so a remote 'archive' would be made of (text documents, not video/audio) files... a couple of examples (far from exhaustive, but know these are free)...

www.drivehq.com offers 1 GB free for archiving (max file upload size is 50 MB, I think, and some s/w is available to automate backups, or to choose 'hot copy' so as soon as a new document is saved, or some document modified, a copy will be archived to their online storage for you.

Alternatively, live.co.uk / live.com (owned by Microsoft) offers e-mail address and 10 GB of storage (5 GB for multimedia, 5 GB for documents) for free. I've not used this as much as DriveHQ (had a/c for 5+ years there).

Ah that's brilliant, thanks. :)