What are USB Memory Sticks

130 hits since 01 May 2008 | Author: Tom Chambers

As technology moves on from the days of the 'floppy disk' new gadgets and gizmos become available in the technology arena. At one time a good old floppy disk would have been ample to store all your work. As applications became more rich and the file sizes of our data increased the 1.44MB available on a floppy disk just wasnt enough.

Enter the modern replacement to the floppy disk - USB Memory Sticks. Common storage capacities of todays usb memory sticks are 1GB, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB. A typical 1GB usb memory stick would around £6 at the time of writing with 2GB under £10.

They are usually housed in a small plastic case. Sometimes they have a cover to protect the USB connector, others have a retractable USB connector. The memory stick is plugged into the USB port of a computer or laptop and under most operating systems no driver is needed. Files can be saved to the memory stick which can then be taken out and used in the future. Any type of file can be saved to the memory stick - pictures, music, letters, spreadsheets, videos etc.

USB memory sticks are non-volatile which means that the data stays on the stick even when is it not powered by a computer or laptop. It does not need any batteries or plug in adapter to work. Some manufacturers quote a data retention lifetime of in excess of 10 years. That said you should always make sure you back up your data as like any electronic device USB memory sticks can suffer component failure potentially rendering destroying your precious data.

Other terms for USB memory sticks are: Jump Drives, Flash Drives, Memory Keys, USB Flash Drives, Memory Vaults, Memory Stick, USB Stick, Flash Stick, Flash Memory etc.

They are produced by many different manufacturers such as, Sony, Kingston, SAN Disk, Freecom, PNY, OCZ, Lexar, Corsair, Verbatim, Belkin and Samsung as well as many others.