Flash USB
Flash drives offer portability and convenience in todays mobile world. USB flashdrive (also known as USB pen drives, thumbdrive or USB jump drive) has a built in drive unlike the past forms of computer storage like floppy disks, CDs, DVDs and even express cards. One simply plugs the "drive" (there are no moving parts in a flash memory) into a USB port, the computer OS recognizes the drive and then one can write and read to it. Discs on the other hand require a disc, a separate drive and then a interface like PATA or SATA or in some cases through the USB port. The elimination of a built-in drive decreases size and cost and increases overall reliability
The ability to be able to write and rewrite many times to a USB flash drive and the speed of duplication all offer advantages over more permanent types of storage. Another advantage to USB flash drives is the ability to encrypt the data by password or biometrics.
USB flash memory drives prices keep decreasing and flash memory storage continues to increase. Marketing firms, real estate agencies, insurance adjusters and educators are finding wide use and acceptance with USB flash.
Flash memory also offers a great solution to today's existing hard drive world with the introduction of Solid State Drives (SSD) as a much more durable and power efficient design. SSD drives are just entering the laptop market now with several manufacturers offering models that feature flash memory drives. There are several levels of SSD performance based on the speed of read/write functions and storage capacity. Consumer based SSD provides economy and an acceptable level of read/write speed in comparison to Enterprise SSD which is optimized for larger storage, frequent re-writes and very fast read/write speeds. Currently Enterprise SSD runs around $80.00 a GB and Consumer SSD runs around $2.00 a GB. SSD uses the SATA interface which makes for a very easy installation in existing laptops.
