USB Drives - Their History and Evolution in Modern Society

[otishmaxwell]

USB Drives are a fantastic little gadget makes data impervious to being damaged, scratched or smudged. They are extremely robust and strong when made properly and the data on a USB stick will last for 50 years. Some flash drives are even made to withstand water meaning a document or data will still be available if the USB is dropped into water.

However with many other things the USB Stick also has its disadvantages. With all flash drives they can only handle a certain number of read, write and erase cycles before becoming warn out and obsolete.

The First generation began hitting the shelves in 1999 as the result of a venture by Singapore organization Trek Technology who sold a USB model called the "Thumb-Drive" this was a huge step for technology as this small usb drive could hold ten times the amount of data on a floppy disk and was more efficient than the ZIP drive.

IBM later took the crown of king USB manufacturer with there product the DiskOnKey USB Stick which was at that point being mass produced by Israeli company M-Systems. This made for a highly competitive market for the small USB drives to be made and sold to the consumer.

In the year 2000 Lexar entered the USB industry with their CF (compact flash) card that featured a USB connection and a companion card reader & writer with USB cable that eliminated the need for USB hubs and other large equipment.

The 4 essential components of these items consist of the Male Type-A USB connector,The Mass Storage Controller module, and the NAND memory chip along with the Crystal Oscillator which creates the device's main 12 MHz clock signal and transmits the items data output through a phase locked loop. This is all connected with several jumper pins, LEDS, Fuses and write protection modules (if optioned)