better way than 300 USB memory sticks.

[smogsy]

Ok we have a new requirement for work we need a better solution for the below task.

what we need to do is transfer a File over usb to certain peices of hardware every month. (4mb file)

how this works is we plug in the usb stick hardware auto searches for a file on the stick and transfers it to the hardware. trouble is this needs to be done every week or sometimes monthly.

So instead of buying 300 Usb sticks (1GB each) for £4 odd a peice is there a better way?

doesnt neccsarly have to do 300 at once but any amount at once would be cool

just looking for suggestions.

my first idea was having a USB hub but then releised the hardware device wouldn't find the file it was searching for.

 

[manic111]

What's wrong with a single USB hard drive?

 

[roughlad]

Is the hardware connected to each other over a network by chance?

 

[smogsy]

well as we need to do 300 of these peices of hardware we need to plug in the hardrive directly into each hardware device sepratalty which means 1 by 1

300 x 5 minutes is a looong time!

replying to the guy above yes all 300 hardware devices are networked over ethernet on our gigabit network but, they can only transfer this file over usb

 

[RickST]

i dont understand why it has to be done over usb?

could you explain a little bit about what the file is doing?

 

[Dazzy_G]

While i was with HP last year i had to do something similar. i ended up not finding any solutions and just made the people at Foxconn do it.

I think making a little (shell script maybe) that just wgets the file over the network would be fine. but yeah depends on what the USB is doing and what these devices are

 

[roughlad]

Is'nt there a way of doing data transfers over usb?
If there is why not do that and link it via a hub.

 

[Dazzy_G]

the issue we had was that the devices installed new firmware from the usb stick, so during development we had to reflash all the firmware. quite annoying.

so it either meant undoing all the machines taking out all the sticks and reflashing them from a pc, or plugging a usb into each and letting them get on with it. i went for the latter.

 

[smogsy]

we need to update the firmware of each device 300 - 500 in total weekly for development only way to code them is via USB

the hardware looks for a filename on the USB then uses that update its own firmware. we want a faster way of doing things.

our other products go via Ethernet but, this time they decided to go via USB.

 

[Guzzidom]

300 wifi usb dongles and a wireless router I guess...

 

[VARDY]

sounds to me you need to get a Systems Analysist to help you.