USB Drive Popularity

So many people have small USB drives today, but what is the attracting of owning one?

USB drives are very small rewritable storage media for your PC, they can be anywhere from 32 megabytes well over a gigabyte! Despite their growing storage capacity and lowering cost, they can quite literally fit on your keychain! To give you an idea on the size of these drives, they are roughly 3 inches long, under an inch wide and weight almost nothing!

USB drives use one of the most common ports on the back of personal computers, the USB port has been in place for many years, and almost every computer built within the last 5-7 years should have a USB port on it. Most new computers have these ports installed on the front of their cases for easy access!

USB drives require no additional software to make them work with a new computer, you just plug it in, and a few moments later a new drive will appear in the list of available drives (in My Computer). Newer computers and USB drives use a USB 2.0 standard which allows data transfers in the vicinity of 480 Mbit/s! If you have a older USB driver, or an older computer, all the USB standards are backwards compatible, so you will be able to use your drive despite the fact your PC may only support USB 1.1!

Many businesses, help desks, and IT support shops have started adopting USB drives as a means of transferring software, updates, fixes and drivers to PC's that are being repaired instead of constantly burning on to blank CD's or DVD's. It saves money by not wasting one write media, and more importantly helps to save the environment by dumping less material in our landfills!

USB drives can also be used of keeping a second copy of your work as a back up, or a transfer media for taking work home. Just the fact that you are using a second storage media to transfer your data, you are making a backup copy incase either your computer or USB drive fails. USB drives are fast more durable that disposable media like CD's and DVD's because it isn't susceptible to scratches and normal wear and tear, most USB drives can take getting dropped or thrown on the desk.

Have you ever been to the office, or over to a friends home and they have pulled out a wallet of pictures and started showing them off proudly? Imagine looking at those and then pulling out your USB pen and showing a movie of your son or daughter playing sports, of a whole family album! There is so many uses for these devices that it makes them indispensable for both business and personal use!

Next time you are down at the store take a look in the computer section and look in to purchasing a USB drive. My biggest piece of advice however is to ensure that USB drive is not wide. Try to get a USB drive that is slightly wider than the plug on the end, this will help ensure it'll fit easily on the back of a computer that has many other devices plugged in without shuffling other devices around!

Ken Dennis
http://KenDennis-RSS.homeip.net