Thumb drive

File Format
Name	Thumb drive
Ontology	Physical File Formats flash memory Thumb drive
Two thumb drives

A thumb drive, or USB flash drive, is a small consumable device which can be inserted into a USB port in a computer or other electronic device in order to provide storage, transfer of data, or to boot "live" OS. It resembles a disk drive to the computer, but has no moving parts; flash memory is used. They are widely used due to their compact size (smaller than a floppy disk or CD), offers high storage capacity, and faster random access than most of its counterparts, excluding Solid State Drives (SSD). The memory is non-volatile, so it will generally hold its data indefinitely, and is freely writable like a floppy or hard disk. Due to their affordability, USB flash drives are prone to malfunctioning, for instance once the limit of cycles has reached. Other ways USB flash drives could be due to the environment.

Many varieties of thumb drives exist with different data capacities. Often the ExFAT filesystem is used to organize data on them.

Because the thumb drive is an electronic device with some in-built intelligence of its own which responds to read and write requests, it is possible to create "hacked" drives which do unusual things such as wipe themselves out if unwanted data retrieval events take place. Such techniques are discussed in a video lecture.

Links

• Wikipedia article
• Discussion about whether it's possible to write-protect a thumb drive - Internet Archive copy
• How to Conceal a USB Flash Drive in Everyday Items
• Library of Congress Recommended Format Specifications: Software/Gaming - Internet Archive copy
• This laptop-bricking USB stick just got even more dangerous - ZDNet