Characteristics of the Best Flash Drives

You can call them a Pen drive, jump drive, keychain, thumb drive, or memory stick; the flash drive is a modern way to carry a large volume of files on the go. They are portable and their lightweight design makes them easy to carry around without any discomfort at all. There are numerous brands available in the market. However, the best brands you can find around are OCZ, Patriot, A-Data, and Kingston drives. Other good ones are SanDisk, Hewlett-Packard, Transcend, PNY, corsair, and Centon drives.

Flash drives are electronic devices that have the capacity to hold a large amount of data. They are usually plug and play, small in size and above all modern flash drives do not require installing software driver off of a CD on your Mac, Linux, or Windows OS before they are ready for use. In addition, today's storage devices could also compress and put passwords on files.

Features of the Best Flash Drives

First, we all know that all modern flash drives are plug and play, so this shouldn't count. What you should be on the lookout for is if the brand of the flash drive you want to buy is compatible with all operating systems (i.e., Mac, Windows, and Linux). It is wise to search for a brand that has a lifetime warranty. Another thing to look out for is the transfer speed: the higher the transfer speed the better. Please note that the reading speed is quite different from the writing speed of a flash drive device. Also, another thing to look for is if the drive is ReadyBoost compatible. This is a good indication that the flash drive is a solid performer and can compress large files. For extra security, you may want a flash drive that allows users to password protected files.

A badly designed flash drive comes with a detachable protection cap that could easily get lost. Some flash drive designs are not only bulky but, internally, the writing and reading speed are far lower than 15MB/second and 35MB/second that we would consider standard. Use these little pieces of information as a measuring stick the next time you go shopping for a flash drive.

Corrupt Files

There are a few drawbacks to the flash drive though. Without a proper data transfer your data can be corrupted. Another problem is that without a flash drive protection (antivirus software), malicious software can infect and damage your stored data. Also, any physical damage to the flash drive may lead to device failure. Due to these possible problems, it is important that you backup your data in other locations besides the flash drive.

Flash drives are what they are because they are portable and you can find one with capacity ranging from 1GB to 60GB or more. Next time you want to go on a trip with an important file without your laptop, a flash drive could come in handy.

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-By Dominic

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