I have a half dozen or so flash drives that I keep in my "tech support" kit when I assist people with their computer issues. They each have installation images for a variety of OSs: Ubuntu, Win 7 Pro 32-bit, Win 7 Pro 64-bit, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, etc. (It's so much easier to carry my own copies than to have to have the people search for their own.) I'd like to consolidate the number of thumb drives that I'd have to carry.
What I am wondering is if there are thumb drives out there with multiple selectable banks (preferably with 4GB/8GB in each)? One of the early variants of Memory Stick had a physical switch to select between which of the two MS stores to access. I'd like ones that have at least 2 memory banks (but more would be better). I'd prefer one with a physical switch with multiple positions, but a push-button selector with some sort of indicator LED would work too. I've looked around and haven't found anything. Maybe I'm not using the correct search terms...I don't know. Does anyone posses such a device or know where I can purchase one?
While that would be ideal (cheaper to manufacture) if it the flash controller was smart enough to select between different flash chips or select between sections of the same flash die, there are other ways it could be implemented. There could be muxing of the USB signal where only a single selected USB device (flash module) is enabled at any given time. That way even flash modules like you mentioned could be used without modification. What I'm saying is that it would be possible to make even without re-engineering the flash module and the massive R&D costs associated with doing so and still be viable.
Logan has an external hdd with such functionality. I believe it is from adata. Easy2Boot also has the same functionality: http://www.easy2boot.com/ I have a USB stick with about a billion ISOs on it. HOWEVER the way this works is you boot to the USB THEN boot to the whatever ISO. Unfortunately, this won;t work for UEFI because of secure boot. The way it works there is you have to tell your PC to do an MBR boot from USB then select the ISO you want to be the 'main' UEFI boot image, then reboot again and tell your PC to do a UEFI Boot off of USB. Which is silly and painful, but works well.
easy2boot is quirky, too. If you don't do it right, you'll end up in a situation where you install windows in MBR mode accidentally, and fastboot never works properly.