USB Drives

Electronic gadgets like computers, laptops, notebook, mobile phones and more are the important part of our day-to-day lives. USB drive or Universal Serial Bus Drive is the important portable external storage device. USB drive is also referred as the Flash drive, thumb drive, pen drive or keychain drive. It is a lightweight, play and plug storage device which is portable. It uses flash memory. A USB drive is used in place of CD or a floppy dick or zip drive disk. When you plug in this USB drive into the computer USB port, it gets recognized as the removable drive by the computer’s operating system.

A USB drive is not platform dependent. Also it does not require rebooting after it is inserted into the port, unlike the most removable drives. And there is no need of external power supply or batteries to operate it. There are many older systems which don’t support USB drives. For such systems, USB drive manufacturers provide with additional features like downloadable drives or the password protection.

A USB drive is a convenient method to transfer the data from one computer to another. It can retain data for long period even if the device is unplugged from the Computer or even if drive is left there in the system which is powered-down. This is a great method to fulfill your backup needs. USB drives are available in wide range of capacities and in various price ranges. Normally, its storage capacity ranges from 32 MB to 2 GB. There are many brands and sizes which you should know before you go for buying a USB drive.

There are few factors you need to consider while buying the most suitable USB drive.

Storage Space

First of all, the most important factor is the size of storage space you want your USB drive to have. If you have requirement of larger space, go for external hard disk with larger storage capacity or otherwise, if you have requirement of smaller storage, you should go for pen or flash drive. Pen drives are preferred for various reasons and most important being you can carry them along with you anywhere without making an effort unlike in the case of hard drive.

Transfer speed of a USB drive is one important factor you should look for. Each USB drive has read and writes speed which depends upon the chip set. Normally, most of the USB drives have average speed of 10MB/s read speed and 3 MB/s write speed as in case of less competitive models. While in higher end models, you can expect a reading speed ranging between 16 MB/s to 32 MB/s and write speed ranging from 10 MB/s to 20MB/s. All these things also depend upon the brand also.

Another important factor to be considered is the type of chip which the flash drive has inside. There are two types of chips used in these drives; MLC (Multi Layer Cell) and SLC (Single Layer Cell). In a MLC, three bits of data are stored in one cell while in SLC, on bit of data is stored in one cell. But contrary to your belief, SLC has faster speed as compared to MLC. SLC has little traffic in one direction to be transferred as compared to MLC.

Also consider the design and size of the USB drive. The size of the drive should not be too large for your computer. The drive should be designed for the USB 2.0 interface. Know about the features of the drive before purchasing. For fast configuration from the network, it comes with easy web-based user interface.