A little bit about USB flash drives
Jump drives. Thumb drives. Removable drives.
These are some of the names given to the popular form of removable media that users connect via USB to their various computers. The most generic and most correct name would be USB flash drive. USB for the type of connector and flash for the type of memory used to hold the data.
People tend to use drives of this nature for storing documents such as resumes, photos, temporary files between computers, install files, and sometimes even as a backup medium among other things. Currently, the most common drive sizes available are between 1 and 16 gigabytes, though there are also 32 and 64 gigabyte drives available at a higher cost. It was announced just recently that Kingston will soon be releasing a 256 gigabyte drive for a touch over $900.
The cost of these drives can vary depending on where you buy them. Major retailers charge between $15 and $30 for the 2 or 4 gigabyte drives and the prices tend to go up about 50% for each step above that. You can, however, get them MUCH cheaper by searching for sales on Amazon.com, ebay, or various deal sites such as Slickdeals.net, Bensbargains.net, or Techdeals.net.
One of the biggest benefits (for now) of these drives is that they are generally formatted using the FAT32 File System. FAT32 can be read by pretty much any major OS released in the last 10 years, so interoperability between OSes is not a problem. It will become a problem in the not-too-distant future as the technical limitation on FAT32 is 8 Terabytes. Not a problem with USB flash drives now, but many platter based hard drive manufacturers are now selling 2 Terabyte drives. It’s only a matter of time.
Data transfer speed on these devices is generally not considered, though it will be an issue in the near future. If I were to fill up a 32 gigabyte flash drive and then copy the entire contents to/from my computer, I might be waiting a little while. This usually isn’t what they are used for frequently, so moving files up to even 50 megabytes or more isn’t a big deal.
It will be interesting to see how far these drives go in their current implementation before USB 3.0, another file system, and ways people use them change.
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From recent experience I think it’s important to point out that the quality control on these devices is less than stellar. While I’ve had some jump drives that have been bent in half, subject to 2 washer & dryer cycles, and still function – I’ve also had drives go bad within two uses and seen friends drives actually start smoking during meltdown. I think for temporary data transfer they work great, but I certainly wouldn’t count any data on these things as backed up or safe.