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A flash drive (also thumb drive, memory stick, and pen drive/pendrive) [1] [note 1] is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. A typical USB drive is removable, rewritable, and smaller than an optical disc , and usually weighs less than 30 g (1 oz).
However, portable devices typically cannot provide enough power for hard-drive disk enclosures (a 2.5-inch (64 mm) hard drive typically requires the maximum 2.5 W in the USB specification) without a self-powered USB hub. A Windows Mobile device cannot display its file system as a mass-storage device unless the device implementer adds that ...
CD-ROMs are the most common forms of media used, but other media, such as magnetic or paper tape drives, ZIP drives, and more recently USB flash drives can be used. The computer's BIOS must support booting from the device in question. One can make one's own boot disk (typically done to prepare for when the system won't start properly). [2]
U3 was a joint venture between SanDisk and M-Systems, [1] producing a proprietary method of launching Windows software from special USB flash drives. Flash drives adhering to the U3 specification are termed "U3 smart drives". U3 smart drives come preinstalled with the U3 Launchpad. Applications that comply with U3 specifications are allowed to ...
More recent flash drives (as of 2012) have much greater capacities, holding 64, 128, and 256 GB. [181] A joint development at Intel and Micron will allow the production of 32-layer 3.5 terabyte (TB [clarification needed]) NAND flash sticks and 10 TB standard-sized SSDs. The device includes 5 packages of 16 × 48 GB TLC dies, using a floating ...
The turn of the millennium saw the widespread introduction of solid-state removable media, with the SD card being introduced in 1999, followed by the USB flash drive in 2000. [21] The capacity of these removable flash drives improved over time, with 2013 seeing Kingston unveiling a 1 terabyte USB flash drive. [22]
A block, a contiguous number of bytes, is the minimum unit of storage that is read from and written to a disk by a disk driver.The earliest disk drives had fixed block sizes (e.g. the IBM 350 disk storage unit (of the late 1950s) block size was 100 six-bit characters) but starting with the 1301 [8] IBM marketed subsystems that featured variable block sizes: a particular track could have blocks ...
Newer drives use RPC-2 firmware, which enforces the DVD region coding at the hardware level. These drives can often be reflashed or hacked with RPC-1 firmware, effectively making the drive region-free. This may void the drive's warranty. [10] Some drives may come set as region-free, so the user is expected to assign their region when they buy it.