USB Flash Drive

All of this is set to change soon though. Several companies that specialize in flash memory have announced upcoming products that look to push the capacities of the solid state drives to be closer to that of a normal hard drive but at even lower prices than the current SSDs. This will have a huge impact for notebook data storage.

A Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash drive is a portable memory chip and circuit board contained in a small plastic case about the size of a thumb, giving rise to the name ThumbDrive®. Also called a memory stick, the tiny drive sports a removable cap under which is a USB connector. The chip inside the USB flash drive does not require power to retain data, so batteries are not needed. The drive gets power from the computer, making the USB flash drive a popular choice for transferring files between computers.

Flash drives hit the market in 2000 with capacities of eight Megabytes (MB), several times greater than the 1.44 MB floppy disks still used at the time. Today the USB flash dive has become so popular and ubiquitous that models with modest capacities of 128–256 MBs are often given away in sales promotions, imprinted for advertising and branding purposes. A four Gigabyte (GB) USB flash drive can cost as little as $10 US Dollars (USD).

Models with the highest storage capacity at any given time are more expensive than buying an equivalent hard drive. As of winter 2008, a 64 GB USB flash drive sells for just under $200 USD, while an internal 1.5 Terabyte (TB) hard drive can cost under $150 USD. One Terabyte is equal to 1, 000 Gigabytes, so that’s a 1, 500 GB hard drive versus a 64 GB memory stick.

However, the draw of the USB flash drive isn’t capacity alone, but convenience and portability. All modern computers feature one or more USB ports and on-board device drivers for recognizing memory sticks, making the USB flash drive universally accepted. It is also formatted in FAT or FAT32, understood by all modern operating systems from Microsoft® Windows® to Apple® Macintosh® and Linux®. Since USB is a plug-and-play standard, the USB flash drive can be plugged into a booted computer and recognized, then removed without need of a reboot.

In some cases, it might be convenient to boot from the memory stick itself. BIOS settings on modern motherboards will allow booting from a USB device. You can make a thumb drive bootable by installing appropriate software on it, freely available online. You can also install a portable version of an operating system (OS) on a USB flash drive and boot into it, trying it out without having to install it on your computer. A bootable memory stick is termed a Live USB drive.

Special software programs can also be installed on and run from thumb drives. These programs will not store program information in system files on the hard drive like regular software does, making the programs totally portable. Carry an email client with you on a USB flash drive to use from anyone’s computer, a Web browser with your bookmarks, or a favorite game.

Chips used in memory sticks have a discrete number of read/write cycles after which the chip will fail. People who use a USB flash drive to archive copies of important files or to occasionally transfer files probably don't have to worry. If the memory stick is used frequently for running software or is otherwise engaged in regular duty, you could see failure within ten years.

Part of what makes the USB flash drive so convenient is also a security risk: the drive is so tiny it is easily lost or misplaced. Information Technology (IT) techs might carry a USB flash drive loaded with networking tools on a lanyard or wrist strap to keep it handy. If security is a concern, consider an encryption program to encode the data on your memory stick. You can buy a USB flash drive with pre-installed security software, or use one of many encryption tools available online.

A USB flash drive weighs next to nothing and is all but impervious to the standard kinds of abuses that might befall a small item like this. It isn’t likely to be effected by being dropped or exposed to extreme temperatures. There are even reports of thumb drives surviving the washer and dryer with no apparent harm done and no data lost. While not wise to count on this, it does speak to the product’s general durability.

Memory sticks are available everywhere electronics are sold. Buying a USB flash drive with pre-loaded software typically costs more than purchasing a blank drive and dressing it up yourself.

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