USB Case Study

There are a number of reasons why we decided to get USB drives in our school. The main reason being we would so often get a panicked student who would bring in their floppy disk and say "It has all my coursework on it and now when I put it in the computer asks if I want to format it". Usually this would mean the work could not be recovered and if the student hadn’t kept a backup of their work on the network servers it meant them having to re-do all the work. Over the years we have seen tears over lost coursework on more than one occasion. With USB drives, they are so much more robust and since we've had them the "I've lost my work" cries have all but died out! We still get the odd student using a floppy disk, but most now either use his or her own or have purchased one from the school.

We had started to see more and more USB drives coming into school with students asking if we would load the drivers on a 98SE client. We decided this was impractical as it would be best if we had our own USB drives that students could buy from the school at cost price. This benefited us as we only now need to load a single driver onto the 98se clients and the benefits to students were they get a good durable USB drive at a price they couldn’t beat anywhere by buying one themselves. The parents were over the moon at being able to get the drives for their kids at such bargain prices!

They had to be cheap yet they still have individual serial numbers. This was at the request of some parents who asked what happens if one student’s memory stick gets mixed with another students or a lost one gets handed in. This way we keep a track of which student has purchased which drive. I am glad we did, everyday one or two get handed in and we are quickly able to trace the panicking owners.

More and more new computers do not even have a floppy drive and the disks are not encouraged here any more! We encourage more and more students to buy a USB drive. Once we explain to them the chance of losing work is reduced and they can have a small drive which are able to contain 100 floppy disks worth of data, then they are all for it.

We've had a few that we have needed to format and a few which didn’t work as expected but these were quickly replaced. The students love them, the parents are happy that they can be recovered if lost and not mistaken for someone else’s, the school is happy at having smart looking USB drives with the corporate logo and my life is a lot easier!