dissolving drugs - silly question - (Nov/23/2011 )

Ok. I realize this will come across as a very silly question. I am working with a very small amount of a drug shipped in a small vial. It's not very soluble in water (something like 0.25 mg / ml) and I have 5 mg of it. Normally I would add the solvent directly to the container and pipette up and down, but I can't do that here.

Would I just directly transfer the drug to a conical tube? I'm not sure if that could result in some loss of the powder in the transferring process.

Transfer the drug to another tube and then wash the remaining powder from the original vial into the new tube with some of your diluent

If it isn't soluble in water, what about using other solvents such as DMSO or ethanol?