fast 2gb usb flashdrive wanted

i want to create an xp install on a flashdrive to boot up my netbook with. i understand i need to use fat16 and there is a 2gb limitation, although i understand there are some circumstances where up to 4gb is possible, but i'm not too sure about that. this would just be an occassional/emergency install, and not for regular use

as flashdrives are pretty cheap now, especially for smaller sizes, i thought that spending a bit more to get the fastest drive would help performance a bit. as you can get 4gig drives for £5, i imagine i could get a fairly speedy 2gb drive for somewhere in that price region. i'm not interested in spending much more than that for little performance increase, but if there was something at £10 that blew everything else away, then that's a different story

does anyone know any cheap and fast 2gb drives and the best/cheapest place to get them (not fleabay or any paypal only places)?

also, if anyone has any speed guides or help in knowing what the fastest read and write speeds are on usb drives it would be handy, so when buying them in general i have an idea if the drive is fast, slow, or average speed for the price and size

cheers

The corsair GT is still the fastest as far as I know, can you get it in 2 GB now I dont know.
Apparently the next gen of flash chips will come out early next year so I guess that is when
a speed increase will occur. The GT has been the fastest for a year now.

Yes the corsair GT does come in 2gb

I seem to remember that the SanDisk Cruzer is fairly fast and just £5 at play.com
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/904314...e/Product.html

Why FAT16 / 2GB limitation?
If your netbook support USB booting it should take anything, including NTFS
I just bought a Transcend 16G SDHC Class6 card, personally I think its pretty fast with write at 12MB/s and read at 24MB/s. Doesn't beat my 8G SSD in my Mini9 in read but blows it out of water with write speed.

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Originally Posted by arthurleung

Why FAT16 / 2GB limitation?
If your netbook support USB booting it should take anything, including NTFS
I just bought a Transcend 16G SDHC Class6 card, personally I think its pretty fast with write at 12MB/s and read at 24MB/s. Doesn't beat my 8G SSD in my Mini9 in read but blows it out of water with write speed.

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i just received the same transcend card but haven't used it yet, but the dell mini card reader isn't usb so you can't boot from it unfortunately, as otherwise i would have put xp on that. reading the guides online it seems you can only boot xp from a usb stick if it's formatted in fat16 which has the 2gig limitation. i'd love to be able to use a 16gig flashdrive for the extra space, but it doesn't seem possible. if anyone knows otherwise and can point me to a guide or details or how to do it i'd be grateful

i might get the £5 one from play for the time being, thanks everyone