A Summary of USB Drives, History, Benefits & Uses

USB Drives Flash Drives Keys
A Flash Drive, Sometimes called a USB Key is manufactured using a "NAND" type memory data storage device.
This device is then mated to a universal serial bus jack which can be easily plugged into any PC or electronic device with the appropriate ports. Offering many potential advantages over other portable storage devices, particularly floppy disks they are more compact, operate a lot faster and facilitate file transfers in a more efficient fashion.
Improvements in data retention have made Flash Data drives the choice for document carrying, some drives allow for up to 1.5 million write and erase cycled and have a data retention of 10 years without corrupting.
The year 2000 saw the first publicly available Flash drives released by IBM and Trek Technology of Singapore. Trek dubbed its new device the "Thumb Drive". IBM called its new innovation "DiskOnKey". An Israeli manufacturing company supplied the facility for producing the new wonder product. Shortly after this Lexar introduced their own spin on the usb drive called the CF or "Compact Flash" with a usb connection and an associated chip reader which removed the need for a USB Hub.
Many manufacturers try to differ their product by using varied designs and styles sometimes making the drives bulky and annoying however some styles offer more compact even further miniaturisation making them a choice fashion accessory for the modern geek!
Fact: In Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows 7, the Ready-Boost feature allows use of some flash drives to augment operating system memory
Companies that are really clued up are using these thumb drives for marketing, they simply hire a printers or promotional firm to make USB drives with their logo printed to the drives, they then use them as giveaway items. The usability of the drive makes them the perfect advertising beacon for any organization. Due to the increasing size and technology improvements the drives are becoming cheaper to produce and purchase by the dozen!
Keep in mind if you do purchase a bulk run of Flash drives that the components come in 3 standards, A, B and C with A being the best quality guaranteed not to corrupt within a short time.