I looked around and wasnt quite sure where to post, but I figured this is a good place.

I'm new to Linux. I run Mandrake 10.0. I'm a college student. I need a USB mass storage device that will work both easily and reliably on my PC and on the computers in the labs at school (which run Windows, but I'm not sure what version).

I wanted to ask a forum full of knowledgable people which devices they would suggest

Thanks in advance.

How MASS storage do you want to get? Any of the solid-state "pen drives, jump drives, thumb drive, usb stick..." will work just fine. External USB hard drives that require no drivers or software should easily work as well. (I would recomment formatting the device FAT32 for linux/windows compatibility.)

As for my preference, SanDisk is a good corporation. And as for hard drives, well, I've seen a lot of dead drives. About 6 I think. They're all been Maxtors. I really like the 6 year warranty that Seagates have, compared to the 1 1/2 year warranty from most guys. You can't go wrong with Tohsiba, eiether.

Western Digital 120GB external USB hard drive here, FWIW. It's a 'value' drive but I'm po' and it suits me. I've always hated optical storage. As far as Windows, it only works on 98SE (with a special driver) or W2K and up (without). As far as Linux, it's no problem so far as I've experienced. Haven't tried it with FreeBSD yet.

I think pretty much if it works in windows, it can be made to work under linux, you just might have to play with your /etc/fstab and kernel configuration to do it.

I use an old 30 GB drive that I mounted in a cheap USB external enclosure and it works great with Mandrake 10.0 and Windows. Autodetects it when I turn it on, regardless of Windows XP or Mandrake. Didn't work so well in Fedora, and Win 98 does require a driver to work, but it sounds like you will probably just fine. If you get one that uses a laptop drive (2.5" instead of 3.5") you won't even need external power as it can just run off the USB port. They tend to be a bit more expensive, though.

My brother has a SanDisk cruzer mini (256 MB) that he loves. I've tried, but I can't get to work on linux. In fact, it seems to even cause problems when it's plugged in. It's just fine on Windows, but I guess it doesn't have a driver under linux. This is the kind of thing I don't completely understand as a newbie.

USB drives will only work in W98SE (with dedicated drivers), Win2K and WinXP.

A Prolific 256MB does not work on Madrake 10 (I think 10.1, might be 10.0) , RedHat7.2 and RH8 and only partly in Xandros 2.0.
It works fine with Ubuntu (Warty Warthog) and Slackware 10.

Buy something with the guarantee that it can be returned and you get your money if it does not work under Mandrake.

What is the problem with the Sandisk? Not detected, unable to mount?

Have a look at http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices ; enter sandisk in the quicksearch. There is one remark for this mini cruzer.