USB flash drive WikipediaJump. Drive redirects here. For the fictional propulsion system, see Jump drive. For the USB flash drive brand of the same name, see Lexar. A Sandisk Cruzer USB drive from 2. GB of storage capacity. A USB flash drive, also variously known as a, thumb drive, pen drive, jump drive, disk key, disk on key, flash drive, memory stick or USB memory,a is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than 3. Since first appearing on the market in late 2. As of March 2. 01. Heres a quick description of how you can use Unlocker,one of my favorite freeware programs, in order to safely remove a USB or external drive whenever. GB are frequently sold, and less frequently 5. GB and 1 TB units. Storage capacities as large as 2 TB are planned, with steady improvements in size and price per capacity expected. Some allow up to 1. USB flash drives are often used for the same purposes for which floppy disks or CDs were once used i. They are smaller, faster, have thousands of times more capacity, and are more durable and reliable because they have no moving parts. Additionally, they are immune to electromagnetic interference unlike floppy disks, and are unharmed by surface scratches unlike CDs. Until about 2. 00. USB ports, but floppy disk drives have become obsolete after widespread adoption of USB ports and the larger USB drive capacity compared to the 1. MB 3. 5 inch floppy disk. USB flash drives use the USB mass storage device class standard, supported natively by modern operating systems such as Windows, Linux, mac. OS and other Unix like systems, as well as many BIOS boot ROMs. USB drives with USB 2. Free Download Crack Usb Disk Security 60' title='Free Download Crack Usb Disk Security 60' />Most flash drives ship preformatted with the FAT32, or exFAT file systems. The ubiquity of the FAT32 file system allows the drive to be accessed on virtually any host. Microsoft Security Essentials helps guard your PC against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. Free Download Crack Usb Disk Security 60 Minutes' title='Free Download Crack Usb Disk Security 60 Minutes' />CD RW or DVD RW drives and can be read by many other systems such as the Xbox 3. Play. Station 3, DVD players, automobile entertainment systems, and in a number of handheld devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, though the electronically similar SD card is better suited for those devices. A flash drive consists of a small printed circuit board carrying the circuit elements and a USB connector, insulated electrically and protected inside a plastic, metal, or rubberised case, which can be carried in a pocket or on a key chain, for example. The USB connector may be protected by a removable cap or by retracting into the body of the drive, although it is not likely to be damaged if unprotected. Most flash drives use a standard type A USB connection allowing connection with a port on a personal computer, but drives for other interfaces also exist. USB flash drives draw power from the computer via the USB connection. Some devices combine the functionality of a portable media player with USB flash storage they require a battery only when used to play music on the go. HistoryeditPatent controversyeditUSB flash drives were invented at M Systems, an Israeli company, in a US patent filed in April 5, 1. Amir Ban, Dov Moran and Oron Ogdan, all M Systems employees at the time. The product was announced by the company in September 2. IBM in 8. MB capacity starting December 1. Pua Khein Seng from Malaysia is considered by many to be the Father of Pen Drive. He is notable for incorporating the worlds first single chip USB flash controller. Pua hails from Sekinchan, Selangor, Malaysia. Pua founded Phison Electronics based in Taiwan with four other partners and is believed to have produced the worlds first USB flash drive with system on chip technology. Competing claims have been made by Singaporean company Trek Technology and Chinese company Netac Technology,1. Both Trek Technology and Netac Technology have attempted to enforce their patent claims. Trek won a Singaporean suit,1. United Kingdom revoked one of Treks UK patents. While Netac Technology has brought lawsuits against PNY Technologies,1. Lenovo,1. 7aigo,1. Sony,1. 92. 02. Taiwans Acer and Tai Guen Enterprise Co,2. USB flash drives do not license Trek and Netacs patents. First commercial productedit. An original IBM Disk. On. Key USB flash drive, providing 8 MB of storage. Trek Technology and IBM began selling the first USB flash drives commercially in 2. Trek Technology sold a model under the brand name Thumb. Drive, and IBM marketed the first such drives in North America with its product named the Disk. On. Key, which was developed and manufactured by the Israeli company M Systems. IBMs USB flash drive became available on December 1. MB, more than five times the capacity of the then common 3 inch floppy disks of 1. KB. In 2. 00. 0, Lexar introduced a Compact Flash CF card with a USB connection, and a companion card readwriter and USB cable that eliminated the need for a USB hub. Second generationeditBy 2. USB flash drives had USB 2. Mbits as the transfer rate upper bound after accounting for the protocol overhead that translates to a 3. MBs effective throughput. That is considerably slower than what a hard disk drive or solid state drive can achieve when connected via the SATA interface. Transfer rates may be given in megabytes per second MBs, megabits per second Mbits, or in optical drive multipliers such as 1. X 1. 80 times 1. Ki. Bs. 2. 6 File transfer rates vary considerably among devices typical fast drives from this generation claim to read at up to 3. MBs and write at about half that rate, which is about 2. USB 1. 1, which is limited to 1. Mbits 1. 5 MBs with accounted overhead. The effective transfer rate of a device is significantly affected by the data access pattern 2. Third generationeditLike USB 2. USB 3. 0 dramatically improved data transfer rates compared to its predecessor. It was announced in late 2. Access Data Forensic Toolkit W Crack. The USB 3. 0 interface specifies transfer rates up to 5 Gbits 6. MBs, compared to USB 2. Mbits 6. 0 MBs. 2. All USB 3. 0 devices are backward compatible with USB 2. As of April 2. 01. USB 3. 0 ports available on the back IO plane or through PCB headers. USB 3. 0 expansion cards are also available to upgrade older systems. Fourth generationeditAs of March 2. USB 3. 1type C flash drives with readwrite speeds of around 5. MBs. 3. 0Storage capacityeditThe first USB flash drive appeared on the market in late 2. MB. 3. 13. 2 Later, the maximum available storage capacity gradually doubled 1. MB, 3. 2 MB, etc. GB3. 5 and 1 TB3. January 2. 01. 3. As of January 2. 01. GB were available. A one terabyte TB drive was unveiled at the 2. Consumer Electronics Show and became available later that year. As of July 2. 01. GB are frequently sold, and less frequently 5. GB and 1 TB units. At the 2. International Consumer Electronics Show a 2 TB flash drive was announced. Design and implementationeditOn a USB flash drive, one end of the device is fitted with a single Standard A USB plug some flash drives additionally offer a micro USB plug, facilitating data transfers between different devices. Flash drives with a USB C interface and other not so common interfaces such as Fire. Wire 4. 00, Fire. Wire 8. 00, and Thunder. Bolt are also available. Inside the plastic casing is a small printed circuit board, which has some power circuitry and a small number of surface mountedintegrated circuits ICs. Typically, one of these ICs provides an interface between the USB connector and the onboard memory, while the other is the flash memory. Drives typically use the USB mass storage device class to communicate with the host.