CYBER NOTES April, 2007 by Dave Benore
What are flash, or thumb, Drives
About six years ago flash drives appeared. They first appeared in quantity in digital cameras and were called memory cards. The technology behind memory cards is “flash memory”, an electronic slang term. It refers to high speed memory that does not require electricity to “remember”, unlike RAM in a computer.
Flash drives came out as very small devices, about the size of your thumb. Originally they could store only small amounts of data and were expensive. Now flash (or thumb) drives that hold 2 GigaBytes (2GB) of data are common and cheap. Flash drives can hold 64 GB, maybe more. They plug into USB ports on computers. Any computer made in the last five years has a few USB ports. The earlier version is called USB 1.1, or “full speed” USB. Later a much faster version came out as USB 2.0, or “high speed”.
When using USB 2.0 with a flash drive installed, one can save files to the flash drive almost as fast as to a hard drive. Then the drive can be removed and plugged into a different computer and the files “read”. Want to take a bunch of photos to a friend’s home to view? Save them to a flash drive and put it in your pocket. Put in into your friends computer and he can view them directly or save them to his hard drive. Files of any kind, data or program, can be saved to a flash drive and copied to another computer. They are really handy to transfer files from an old computer to a new one. (But they don’t like hard impacts.)
Flash drives can be plugged into and unplugged from your computer while it is on. However, you should follow a procedure before unplugging one. Look in the system tray (lower right hand side of the bottom of the screen) for a small cryptic symbol that looks like a green arrow over a gray rectangle. Put the cursor over it and the words “safely remove hardware” should show. Click on the symbol and a menu of removable devices is shown. Click on the flash drive device. When the “safe to remove hardware” message is shown, then unplug the flash drive.
Note: Another beginners’ computer class starts May 3, 2007. Free for VOCA members, $5 per class for others. Please look in the Community Events Calendar in this issue for more information. For questions or to register call Dave Benore, 284-3187. The classes are fun and informational; and there are no dumb questions!
