Could a flash drive be used in place of a hard drive for offloading files from the camera? They're available in 64GB.

Philip - you didn't say what camera you are using, but in any case, flash drives are very slow compared to hard drives or SSDs. If you have an older laptop with a PCMCIA slot, the P2 cards can be inserted directly (after installing the proper P2 drivers, on the CD that came with the camera) and can then be downloaded onto any drive with a USB connection that can plug into the laptop. I do this regularly to a SSD, and I used to do it to portable hard drives. If you have a newer laptop with an ExpressCard slot, there are adaptors that you can use that plug into the ExpressCard slot and provide a PCMCIA slot which will fit the P2 card. If you are offloading some other type of card, the basic principle applies. Jump drives are slow, so unless you have a lot of time on your hands, offload to a portable hard drive or to a SSD. A 7200 speed hard drive is much faster than a 5400 speed hard drive, and in general, 2.5 " regular hard drives are less reliable than 3.5" hard drives. In today's world, I would go with the SSD. You can buy an external enclosure for any size hard drive, - some even come with USB 3.0 or E-SATA interfaces that are faster yet. For SSDs you will want a 2.5" external enclosure, which will cost between $ 20 and $ 40. Good luck !