USB Flash Drives Guide
If you don't need very capacious but highly portable storage, hard drives based on flash memory seems to
be ideal solution for you. Their capacity range from 16MB to 4GB and they are in lipstick size and shape.
You can also meet even 20GB USB flash drives but they are heavier and bigger.
Flash Drives Features
Because of flash memory physical features, transfer rates you can achieve are lower than in magnetic hard drives and range about 15MB/s in each way. This is about twice as much as 50x CD-ROM maximum speed. Additionally, flash drive keeps constant transfer speed across whole its space. Transfer speed of CD-ROM or magnetic hard drives depends on the place where you are writing to or reading from. Copying bigger amount of data, the times you can achieve on flash drive and traditional hard drive are comparable. At 15MB/s speed you can copy content of one 700MB CD in about 45 seconds, which is very good result.
Flash drives are always powered directly from USB and can be hot plugged while computer is working. Windows and other popular operating systems detect them automatically so they don't need any drivers. In Windows they appear as an additional hard drive in "My Computer" and you can use them just like any other drive.
If you care about your data security, you have an option to choose model with data encryption. To access your files you will have to decrypt them using your personal password. Read our laptop security articles if you would like to know more about increasing your data safety.
Flash drives are much more expensive than magnetic storage. 1GB external flash hard drive costs the same as 250GB external magnetic drive. Although price for MB is high, you get highly portable and reliable storage. The SANDISK Cruzer Micro in 256MB version, you can see at the picture above, costs about $45. For me it is enough to hold all of my private data and I don't have to worry that they will be damaged like few years before when I used floppy disks.
Listen MP3 From Your Flash Drive
Some flash drives, like Cruzer Micro can be used together with special mp3 player as storage for your music. If you need both flash drive - for moving your data - and mp3 player, this may be the cheapest solution as you pay for the most expensive part - flash memory - only once.
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