This is a simple guide for USB Flash Drives, such as those sold in my eBay shop (You Found It at MPRC! ). Flash memory is non-volatile ie data stored on a Flash Drive will be retained until overwritten by new data or the drive is formatted (all files erased).

Flash Drives come in various shapes & sizes and the smallest ones are usually described as pen drives. This has mainly come about by the introduction of Flash drives that look like and indeed act like a writing instrument.


These have now been developed further, so that (including the USB connector plug) the whole device can be as small as 3 or 4cm in length. There are even drives on the market that are not much bigger than a 1GBP coin! (a 1 Euro coin is almost the same size). These devices are designed to be carried in your pocket, or if supplied with a lanyard, around the user's neck - portability is the name if the game.

Capacity varies from as little as 64mb to as much as 4GB* (Gigabytes: 1 GB = 1000 megabytes) - which represents a sizable amount of storage. Manufacturers will supply tables of data, showing how many photo's or minutes of music files can be stored per drive size. For example, a 1GB drive will hold approximately 1000 photo's (at a resolution of 2 mega pixels) - but the actual number will vary by brand and average file size.

* Warning - Many of these large capacity USB drives originating from the Far East, are reckoned to be cheap Chinese fakes. Generally, they are 128 or 256mb drives that have been 'overrated' and then stamped with a fake high capacity. Most users will not notice until the amount of data starts to exceed the drive's actual capacity, by which time it might be too late as there will almost certainly be data corruption and loss. In the worst cases, the drive simply stops working.

We don't sell these 1- 4gb drives at  present, as we think it's too risky and we  have found it difficult to get a good deal from a verifiable source. (It's reckoned that over 95% of all the high capacity drives advertised for sale on eBay, are indeed fake).

You can check the capacity of these large capacity drives but our advice is 'Steer well clear'. If you must indulge, then make sure you only buy from a highly reputable sources and ensure that all the accessories advertised by the manufacturer are really included. All the major brands such as Sony, Sandisk and Kingston have full product details and specifications on their websites.

More advice re these fake drives can be found at: Fake 1-4GB USB Drives

All these devices, whether small or large in terms of capacity, are powered by the host device when plugged in via the USB port and typically operate on a tiny 3.3 volts. The drives require no external power source and the NAND technology used, means that data can be stored for up to 10 years! Also, in most cases, Flash drives can be read from and written to in excess of 100,000 times

Once plugged into a PC or Mac, the Flash drive can be accessed as a removable disk, with properties very similar to your Hard Disk, except that Flash memory does not have any moving parts, such as a platter or a read head.

Caution!

You must not simply remove a USB Flash drive from its connectiion to your PC or Mac, as this may well corrupt the data held on your pen drive. Worse still, you might damge the drive, rendering it unusable, or even cause the USB port on your PC or Mac to become inoperabel, ie not recognize that a USB device is present.

The latest operating systems, such as Windows XP, allow you to safely remove devices connected to your USB port withiut having to shut down. Just follow the instructions given by the "safely remove Mass Storage device" icon in your System Tray.

At the very least, if you are not sure, close your PC or Mac down first, prior to removing the Flash drive from the USB port. Corruption of data is the most common form of complaint made by buyers - this can easily be avoided by carefully following the basic rules. Read more in your Windows Help files or User Manual.

Most Flash drives will offer some form of password protection, so that private files can only be accessed by the intended user. In addition, there is usually some form of file locking capability, so the files cannot be accidentally erased (IMPORTANT however - see below).

Flash drives can be used in exactly the same way as fixed or removable storage, ue files can be written to or saved on the drive, read, modified, deleted, overwritten etc. In addition, the user can format the drive (in the same way as any other drive). CAUTION however, as formatting erases ALL data including any protected files or information!

The use of Flash technology allows data in a number of well known formats, eg mp3, mov, wav (audio & video), jpg, jpeg, gif, bmp etc (digital photo's and drawings, clip art etc). In fact virtually any type of file that might be stored on a PC or Mac can be written to or stored on a Flash Drive.

Read and write speeds will depend on the sophistication of the Flash Drive - many devices that are supplied from the Far East as unbranded or lesser known secondary brands, will be relatively slow, with read/wrte speeds of under 1mb/sec. Major brands, such as Kingston, Integral, PNY, Sony, etc. tend to have faster read/write speeds, 6-8mb/sec or more BUT you do normally have to pay significantly more. Listings on eBay will usually state high speeds as a feature of the particular drive being sold.

The principal non-academic use however, is for the storage of digital photo's, which can then be displayed on a PC (Desktop or Laptop) or a Mac (as for PC), or MP3 (music) files, which are now commonly available via dowload sites on the Internet. Because all of the file information stored on the drive is retained, then the data can be shared with any device capable of reading it an translating to pictures or music.

Flash drives are very popular with students, who can save all their project data from their PC at college or uni and transfer them to a home system during term holidays etc.

All branded USB drives offered in our eBay shop  are on sale at significantly below retail prices found in Dixons & PC World and other well known retailers such as Woolworths, Jon Lewis and Jessops - please pay us a visit!

E & OE

(c) 2006

MPRC