USB flash drive - Wikipedia. For the fictional propulsion system, see Jump drive. For the USB flash drive brand of the same name, see Lexar. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than 3.
Read about the latest security news including mobile security, open source security, malware and more. A USB flash drive, also variously known as a USB drive, USB stick, thumb drive, pen drive, jump drive, disk key, disk on key, flash-drive, memory stick or USB memory. PinStripe USB drive makes transporting and sharing files simple; The drive features a slim retractable design; Compatible with Windows 8. Discover Schneider Electric range of products: PLCs, motor starters, drives, circuit breakers, switches, sockets, lighting, transformers, substations, UPS etc.
As of March 2. 01. 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. 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 rubberized 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.
I have encountered this issue for a while. I plug something into a USB port (portable HDD, camera, etc) and I can't access it. I know the USB ports work because my.
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.
History. He is notable for incorporating the world's 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 world's first USB flash drive with system- on- chip technology. Trek won a Singaporean suit.
Trek Technology sold a model under the brand name . It was announced in late 2. The USB 3. 0 interface specifies transfer rates up to 5 Gbit/s (6. MB/s), compared to USB 2. Mbit/s (6. 0 MB/s). USB 3. 0 expansion cards are also available to upgrade older systems. Fourth generation.
One of the easiest ways to get data off an ext2/3 disk from a Windows machine is to use Ext2Fsd. Here are Ext2Fsd installation and usage instructions.
As of January 2. 01. 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. Technology. The memory storage was based on earlier EPROM and EEPROM technologies. These had limited capacity, were slow for both reading and writing, required complex high- voltage drive circuitry, and could be re- written only after erasing the entire contents of the chip. Hardware designers later developed EEPROMs with the erasure region broken up into smaller . Altering the contents of a particular memory location involved copying the entire field into an off- chip buffer memory, erasing the field, modifying the data as required in the buffer, and re- writing it into the same field.
This required considerable computer support, and PC- based EEPROM flash memory systems often carried their own dedicated microprocessor system. Flash drives are more or less a miniaturized version of this. The development of high- speed serial data interfaces such as USB made semiconductor memory systems with serially accessed storage viable, and the simultaneous development of small, high- speed, low- power microprocessor systems allowed this to be incorporated into extremely compact systems. Serial access requires far fewer electrical connections for the memory chips than does parallel access, which has simplified the manufacture of multi- gigabyte drives. Computers access modern.
The actual EEPROM writing and erasure processes are, however, still very similar to the earlier systems described above. Many low- cost MP3 players simply add extra software and a battery to a standard flash memory control microprocessor so it can also serve as a music playback decoder. Most of these players can also be used as a conventional flash drive, for storing files of any type. Essential components.
Some USB flash drives use USB plug that does not protect the 4 contacts, with the possibility of plugging it into the USB port the other way around. USB mass storage controller – a small microcontroller with a small amount of on- chip ROM and RAM. NAND flash memory chip(s) – stores data (NAND flash is typically also used in digital cameras).
Crystal oscillator – produces the device's main 1. MHz clock signal and controls the device's data output through a phase- locked loop.
Cover – typically made of plastic or metal, protecting the electronics against mechanical stress and even possible short circuits. Additional components. Having this second space allows the manufacturer to use a single printed circuit board for more than one storage size device.
USB connector cover or cap – reduces the risk of damage, prevents the entry of dirt or other contaminants, and improves overall device appearance. Some flash drives use retractable USB connectors instead.
Others have a swivel arrangement so that the connector can be protected without removing anything. Transport aid – the cap or the body often contains a hole suitable for connection to a key chain or lanyard. Connecting the cap, rather than the body, can allow the drive itself to be lost.
Some drives offer expandable storage via an internal memory card slot, much like a memory card reader. Because the USB port connectors on a computer housing are often closely spaced, plugging a flash drive into a USB port may block an adjacent port. Such devices may carry the USB logo only if sold with a separate extension cable. Such cables are USB- compatible but do not conform to the USB standard. USB flash drives with images of dragons, cats or aliens are very popular in Asia. The ubiquity of the FAT3.
USB support. Also, standard FAT maintenance utilities (e. Scan. Disk) can be used to repair or retrieve corrupted data. However, because a flash drive appears as a USB- connected hard drive to the host system, the drive can be reformatted to any file system supported by the host operating system. Defragmenting. Flash drives can be defragmented. There is a widespread opinion that defragmenting brings little advantage (as there is no mechanical head that moves from fragment to fragment), and that defragmenting shortens the life of the drive by making many unnecessary writes. Some USB flash drives have this 'wear leveling' feature built into the software controller to prolong device life, while others do not, so it is not necessarily helpful to install one of these file systems.
Therefore, USB flash units can be partitioned just like hard disk drives. Longevity. There is virtually no limit to the number of reads from such flash memory, so a well- worn USB drive may be write- protected to help ensure the life of individual cells. Estimation of flash memory endurance is a challenging subject that depends on the SLC/MLC/TLC memory type, size of the flash memory chips, and actual usage pattern. As a result, a USB flash drive can last from a few days to several hundred years. These are typically low capacity USB drives which are modified so that they emulate larger capacity drives (for example, a 2 GB drive being marketed as a 6. GB drive). When plugged into a computer, they report themselves as being the larger capacity they were sold as, but when data is written to them, either the write fails, the drive freezes up, or it overwrites existing data. Software tools exist to check and detect fake USB drives.
These speeds are for optimal conditions; real- world speeds are usually slower. In particular, circumstances that often lead to speeds much lower than advertised are transfer (particularly writing) of many small files rather than a few very large ones, and mixed reading and writing to the same device. In a typical well- conducted review of a number of high- performance USB 3. MB/s and write at 4.
MB/s, could only manage 1. MB/s and 0. 3 MB/s with many small files. When combining streaming reads and writes the speed of another drive, that could read at 9. MB/s and write at 7. MB/s, was 8 MB/s.
These differences differ radically from one drive to another; some drives could write small files at over 1. The examples given are chosen to illustrate extremes... Individuals also store medical information on flash drives for emergencies and disaster preparation. Secure storage of data, application and software files. The use of biometrics and encryption is becoming the norm with the need for increased security for data; on- the- fly encryption systems are particularly useful in this regard, as they can transparently encrypt large amounts of data.
In some cases a secure USB drive may use a hardware- based encryption mechanism that uses a hardware module instead of software for strongly encrypting data. IEEE 1. 66. 7 is an attempt to create a generic authentication platform for USB drives.
It is supported in Windows 7 and Windows Vista (Service Pack 2 with a hotfix). COFEE is a set of applications designed to search for and extract digital evidence on computers confiscated from suspects.
Other forensic suites run from CD- ROM or DVD- ROM, but cannot store data on the media they are run from (although they can write to other attached devices, such as external drives or memory sticks). Updating motherboard firmware. Usually, new firmware image is downloaded and placed onto a FAT1.