Flash Drive
Alternatively referred to as a USB flash drive, data stick, pen drive, memory unit, keychain drive, and thumb drive, a jump drive is a portable storage device. It is often the size of a human thumb (hence the name), and connects to a computer via a USB port. Flash drives are an easy way to store and transfer information between computers and range in sizes from 2 GB to 1 TB.
Unlike a standard hard drive, the flash drive has no movable parts; it contains only an integrated circuit memory chip that is used to store data. Flash drives usually have plastic or aluminum casings surrounding the memory chip. The picture shows a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 16 GB flash drive.
A flash drive can be utilized like any drive on your computer. To save a file to your thumb drive, follow the steps below.
1. Start by inserting the flash drive into a front or back USB port or a USB hub.
When connecting a flash drive to a computer on Microsoft Windows, it becomes the first available drive letter after those already in use. For example, your hard drive is C: and your disc drive is D:, then your flash drive would likely be the E: drive. An exception to this rule would be if you have more than one hard drive. If you are still unsure, open File Explorer, and watch for a new drive to appear after you insert the thumb drive.
A jump drive and a flash drive are the same, but with different names. The confusion seems to arise in the difference between a flash drive, which is a device (detailed above), and flash memory, which is a non-volatile storage medium. Flash memory is used in many devices, including flash drives, solid-state drives, and memory cards.
The USB flash drive is most often used to store and transfer files between computers. For example, you could write a report using a school computer, copy the file to your USB flash drive, and later connect it to your home computer to continue working. USB flash drives are also a great and easy way to back up your important files. For example, you could copy all your pictures, documents, music, or other files to a flash drive and store it somewhere safe in case something happened to your computer.
Before the popularity of flash drives, most people used recordable CDs and DVDs to store and backup data.
Currently, flash drives hold between 8 GB and 2 TB of information.
Today, even a 16 GB flash drive is not that much money, and we recommend buying as much as you can afford. However, if you are only planning on storing a few document files or not that many files on the drive, you can save yourself some money by buying a smaller drive.
The first USB flash drives were developed in April 1999 at M-Systems (now SanDisk), an Israeli company, by Amir Ban, Dov Moran, and Oron Ogdan. M-Systems announced the USB flash drives in September 2000 and were first sold to the public in December 2000 by IBM with a capacity of 8 MB.