National Flash Drive Day on April 5 commemorates the date inventors filed their patent for the first USB Flash Disk. Their invention revolutionized the way we store and manage digital data!
- As information flowed from our fingertips, the flash drive became the go-to storage device. Called by many names, the USB (universal serial bus) drive makes digital data more accessible than ever before. Today, we effortlessly store photos, transfer files and upload gigabytes. Not only that, but flash drives contribute to making the world a better place.
- USB Flash Performance: Capacity isn’t the only thing to look for when deciding on which USB drive to purchase. Look for varying data transfer rates when determining your next flash drive purchase; higher the better!
- A device of many names, the USB flash drive is also sometimes referred to as a memory stick, keydrive, pendrive, thumbdrive or jumpdrive.
- In 1999, the USB stick was invented by Amir Ban, Dov Moran and Oron Ogdan, who all worked for Israeli tech company, M-Systems.
- Trek Technology and IBM were the first to start selling USB flash drives 1.0 and, later, 1.1, in 2000.
- The highest capacity USB flash drive 3.0 today is 2 TB – released by Kingston, and know as the Data Traveler Ultimate GT (generation terabyte).
- Between 2016-2017, North Korean defectors shipped several thousand USB flash drives containing banned content such as South Korean soaps, Hollywood films and global news to the country, with the goal of spreading information about the outside world to North Koreans with limit access to the open internet and telecommunications.
- Researchers from the Uni of Michigan and the Uni of Illinois conducted a study whereby they dropped USB sticks containing HTML files that have img tags embedded in a nearby car park. They found that 48% of the flash drives were picked up and plugged them into a PC. 68% of users failed to take any safety precautions or scans.
Sources:
YouTube.com/Inquisitive Mind
