Thumb drive
From Just Solve the File Format Problem
(Difference between revisions)
Dan Tobias (Talk | contribs) (Created page with "{{FormatInfo |formattype=physical }} A '''thumb drive''', or ''USB flash drive''', is a small device which can be inserted into a USB port in a computer or other electron...") |
Revision as of 17:38, 30 December 2012
A thumb drive', or USB flash drive, is a small device which can be inserted into a USB port in a computer or other electronic device in order to provide storage or transfer of data. It resembles a disk drive to the computer, but has no moving parts. They are widely used due to their compact size (smaller than a floppy disk or CD) and high storage capacity (as much as 256 gigabytes now, with terabyte-sized thumb drives in the works for the future). The memory is nonvolatile, so it will hold its data indefinitely just like a disk, and is freely readable and writable like a floppy or hard disk.
Many varieties of thumb drives exist with different data capacities.
References
- Wikipedia article
- Writing a thumbdrive from scratch: Video lecture describing "hacking" the low level of a thumb drive and its firmware and interfaces, for such purposes as hiding your data from forensic scans
