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17-March-2008: The following redirect to "USB flash drive":
All those name variations were created due to the importance of the article, as some consider USB flash drives as making floppies obsolete. Plus, all those names have thousands or millions of search-engine hits, with "pocket drive" having 182,000 Google hits, "clip drive" having 36,500 hits. A less common subject would not warrant 29 aliases. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with listing at least the more common alternative names, or indeed all of them. It seems perverse to say that because there are many synonyms then none of them should be listed - which seems tantamount to suggesting that the alternative names aren't used. Surely the more alternative names there are, the more important it is to list them! (So that readers understand that terms they may be familiar with, e.g. pen drive, refer to the same thing as a USB flash drive.) How about just having a heading 'Alternative names' and list them there?
Another name incidentally which used to be used is 'data stick' - I've added a redirect from it. Ben Finn (talk) 16:52, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Cute Jump Drives Video
What does "speed 120X" mean?
I think the article needs a more complete explanation about the speeds of current drives. Also in the sentence "The highest current overall file transfer speeds are about 10-60 MB/s", 10-60 MB/s is a too wide range... --Lefter 12:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! But I meant the max. speed of the flash chips itself not the USB 2.0 port. The article states that with most drives the speed of the flash chip is much lower than the max. speed of USB 2.0. Also I have met on the Internet specifications like "speed 120X" but I cannot find anywhere what speed 1X equals. Is it Floppy, USB, CD-ROM, or DVD speed? I think it would be nice if someone adds this to the article. --Lefter 12:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC) --Preceding unsigned comment added by Lefter (talk o contribs)
New Picture
Hi, I made a photo of my own Toshiba TransMemory Flash drive and feel like adding it on here to give the photos a consistent quality to them. I'll replace the the current photo of the black Flash Drive next to a ruler , which is a bit unaesthetic and rustic in my opinion, (and the first picture already has a ruler for comparison) with my own. Tell me what you think, if you want to replace it, feel free to bring it up here and go ahead. Thanks
Gamer112 (talk) 18:54, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
JFFS/YAFFS
Spoon recently added a line stating that JFFS2 and YAFFS2 are useful on a UFD. However, my understanding is that these systems are mainly useful on flash memory that can be directly accessed (e.g. SmartMedia through a raw reader), by assisting with wear levelling, cacheing, etc. However, a UFD abstracts the memory structure, and its controller provides similar intermediate features, such that these filesystems shouldn't make a significant difference.
Unless anyone objects (and has persuasive evidence that JFFS2 or YAFFS2 provide advantages over other filesystems on a UFD), I'm going to remove the sentence. EJSawyer (talk) 07:00, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Running web applications
I added the content below about running web applications, which I think is useful and significant information (and referenced), but is was removed by this edit, with an irrelevant edit summary about ¨running mail servers¨. Rather then a preemptive revert, I think this is worthy of discussion here. If mail servers are worth mentioning also, then they can be too. Any comment from other editors on this? Peter Campbell 13:18, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Running web applications
A web server such as XAMPP can be loaded onto a USB drive and used to run Apache HTTP Server, MySQL database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl programming languages. Such a platform can then run web applications loaded onto the same USB drive such as:
- Mediawiki - the software that powers Wikipedia
- Drupal - an open source content management system
Testing for consensus on inclusion of web app content
Testing for consensus on the inclusion of the above content, to broaden the poll from 1 for and 2 against: Can more editors indicate whether they support or oppose including this content in the article. Peter Campbell 11:10, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
Fragmentation
We need to careful with these assertions that fragmentation is of no consequence on a flash drive - it isn't true. Contiguous files on a flash drive can be transferred in bulk with a limited number of commands. Fragmented files on the other hand require extra commands for each non-contiguous section which need issuing repeatedly as each previous request is completed. The protocol overhead imposed is nothing like the penalty imposed by a seek on a real disk but to say that there is no penalty is overstating things. CrispMuncher (talk) 21:56, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Very interesting reference. Hard information on this topic is hard to find. Another much-touted point is wear; what seems to be missing is empirical information of the lifetime of real flash memory devices in terms of, say, FAT32 file operations. Han-Kwang's reference says "A standard hard disk defragmentation tool might not be the ideal tool to defragment a flash drive, since it is not aware of the allocation block size inside the flash drive. This may slow down the defragmentation procedure". This implies that a HD defragmenter will do a good job, but might take a long time. Possibly frequent defragmentation in place this way, requiring huge numbers of writes, would significantly shorten the effective life of a device (it might wear out before becoming obsolete); perhaps the best way (perfect defragmentation with minimal wear) to defragment flash devices is by backing up (to a hard drive) and restoring on a file-by-file, not sector, basis?
In the light of what's been said here, the "File systems" section could do with amending. Pol098 (talk) 11:54, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation based on the reference quoted above (write 15MB with 4000 accesses takes 492"; write 486MB with 1 access, 291") could be interpreted as a write speed of 1.67MB/s and a "write access time" of 120ms. Read speed 7.4MB/s, "read access time" 0.6ms. This assumes the large file is written as a single block; a block size of, say, 128kB (which gives the most sensible answers) would give 9.3MB/s and 63ms "write access time". FWIW (not too much). Pol098 (talk) 12:59, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
Comparison with other portable storage
Hang on - this should be an article in it's own right ("Comparison of portable storage", or similar), not tucked away here! Nuwewsco (talk) 18:21, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Permanent erasure?
When I erase a file from my flash drive, I get the message: "Do you want to permanently erase this file?" If no trace is left on the flash drive, then it would be the preferred medium for privacy--either my privacy or some terrorist's privacy. Is there, in fact, no way to recover an erased file from a flash drive? Dynzmoar (talk) 13:03, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
There are many levels of answering your question. On the simple level, the question would be, are the bits still there? With most computer tech, the answer would be YES, the bits are still there after "deleting" a file. The only way a user can be quite confident that the bits are gone is to delete the file and then fill up the device with other data. (Even then, assume that file name debris may persist in the directories.)
At the paranoid level, the question is, if the bits have been overwritten, can the data be recovered? This is mostly a theoretical question. It would usually take very special skills and equipment, costing thousands or millions of dollars, to try to get back the information. Yet this can be done, at least with hard drives. This is why there is special software to overwrite the data on hard drives over and over and over... Similar issues may apply to flash drive tech. (Ghosts of previous bits.) But if people who have these kinds of resources are after your data, there are easier ways for them to steal it.
If you need to be damn sure information is erased, physically destroy the medium. If you want practical deletion and re-use, overwrite the bits a number of times with other mixed data. (The only way to be sure information stays private is to never type it on any keyboard.) -69.87.204.110 (talk) 11:55, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Macintosh
This article needs much more info about file transfer between computers on flash drives. It is great to say that "FAT or FAT 32 file system" is universal. But that is just beginning. What other formats are actually used, on Linux and Mac, and what are the reasons they should or shouldn't be used, for various purposes? Particularly, why would anyone with a Mac use non-FAT on a flash drive, what advantages might there be? -69.87.204.110 (talk) 11:55, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Not obsolete
"Obsolete devices
Audio tape cassettes are no longer used for data storage. High-capacity floppy discs (e.g. Imation SuperDisk), and other forms of drives with removable magnetic media such as the Iomega Zip and Jaz drives are now obsolete and no longer an option."
I'm assuming 'audio tapes' is refering to Compact Cassettes. I hope it doesn't refer to Digital Audio Tapes. The Iomega Zip drive is not obsolete and is still avaliable, and therefore still an option. http://store.iomega.com/section?p=4760&secid=39520
S. Coates
87.112.78.14 (talk) 18:10, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. I suggest you all go look up the definition of "Obsolete" before you post. While it is true that audio tapes are no longer used for data storage (unless you're still using an obsolete computer), floppy disks still have their uses. In fact, a lot of motherboards still come with on on-board port for a floppy dive. Why? Allow me to quote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk.
::QUOTE:
"It should be noted that Windows XP still requires the use of floppy drives to install third-party RAID, SATA and AHCI hard drives, unless the install cd were modified to include these drivers with programs made to customize a Windows XP install cd, such as nLite"
::END QUOTE:
Yeah. That's right. If you want to install Windows XP onto a SATA drive and you haven't rolled the SATA drivers into your XP installation media, you need a floppy drive and a floppy disk to add the SATA drivers to the installation. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F6_disk for more information. A USB flash drive is not supported for this purpose and there no way to make XP support it for that purpose. Same goes for optical drives. Ask any CompTIA A+ certified technician, or better yet go look it up in any CompTIA A+ reference manual or exam study guide.
Now, considering that Windows XP is hardly "obsolete" I'd say that this is a pretty good reason to keep floppy drives around for a while, wouldn't you?Allthenamesarealreadytaken (talk) 03:19, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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