In this article, we discuss the role of Flash Drives in today's evolving innovations in storage devices. Read on to know the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash Drives in today's age.
Since the introduction of the flash drives in the market, numerous people have been using them and benefiting from their existence.
What are Flash Drives?
A small chip covered by a protective plastic or metal casing is the common physical appearance of a flash drive. Its main purpose is to store and transfer digital data such as text documents, photos, videos and music. USB flash drives are one of the best external storage devices existing in the market. They are easy to use, and their portability makes them the best choice for people who are constantly on the move. A number of people nowadays look for bulk flash drives for sale in order to buy these devices in large numbers for various different reasons.
However, like everything in today's world, they also have a few advantages and disadvantages. In this article, we discuss these advantages and disadvantages and conclude if the advantages outweigh the disadvantages or vice versa.
Advantages
Portability:
Storage Capacity: the earliest versions of a USB drive did not have much storage capacity and maximized at 8GB. However, with the passage of time, this feature has been improved by a large margin, and today's market offers USB devices that can store up to 2TB of data. However, when purchasing a USB device, it is essential to know your needs and make the purchase accordingly in order to avoid any inconvenience.
Read and Write: Whether it is digital documents you want to copy to your thumb drive, or media files such as photos, video and music, they can all be transferred to the USB drive with ease. It also does not take much time to make this transfer and depending upon the size of the data it takes only a few minutes to be transferred, unlike the previously used CDs that required hours in order to burn a few files to the disk. Flash drives also allow an individual to save multiple kinds of data to the same drive. For example, your flash drive can hold documents, audio files, videos and photos all at the same time without you having to install any additional software in them.
Compatibility: Another major advantage of using a USB drive to transfer your files is the ease of compatibility they offer. Whether the device you want to connect to is a laptop, desktop or a digital camera, a flash drive has no requirement of any software to be installed in advance and can easily be connected to any of these devices within seconds. All you need is a USB port, and the job is done.
Durability: A number of people like to use their smartphones as storage devices, and some prefer to carry around large external hard drives with them for their digital media storage needs. However, these drives are fragile when it comes to durability. There is a major chance that if you drop your hard drive, it may not work. On the other hand, a USB drive is much more durable and can withstand quite a lot. If dropped, USB drives will work, and the data they have stored inside will stay safe.
Affordable: When compared to the many other external storage devices, a USB flash proves to be much less expensive for the same amount of storage space. Although their prices vary depending upon their storage capacity, they still prove to be more affordable than hard drives and can be easily bought by people on a lower budget.
Data Security: All thanks to the ever-improving technology, USB flash drives now come with the feature of being encrypted with passwords. This protects the data they hold and makes certain your private files are not seen by another in case of loss of the USB device.
Disadvantages:
Easy To Lose: Due to the small size, which makes these devices travel friendly, it also puts them at a big risk of getting misplaced. If carried in a wallet or pocket, it is quite easy to lose them by way of dropping them and not realizing they are gone. Such a situation can become problematic, especially when there is sensitive data saved on the thumb drive. This is why it is a good idea to get a USB flash drive that attaches to your keychain so that it is neither lost nor forgotten. Another way to avoid this is to get a credit card shaped USB Flash drive, which will ensure easy carrying in your wallet and not slipping and falling.
Corruption Issue: Everyone uses their USB drives on multiple computers, laptops and other gadgets. If there is no antivirus on one of these devices and that device gets affected by a virus, it is possible for your USB device to become infected with the virus as soon as it is connected to the affected gadget. This can mean a number of inconveniences such as; your data getting corrupted and loss of data, you not realizing your device has contracted a virus and possibly infecting other devices which you might connect to and starting a chain reaction of transfer of malicious programs if you connect into a publicly used computer.
Rewrite Limitations: Even though this can be a large issue as the limitation for rewriting data is roughly 100,000 times and average users do not reach this limit, it can still be a problem for users who are frequently deleting and writing data to their drives.
Conclusion
Now that we have discussed the possible advantages and disadvantages of these devices, it is easy to see that the advantages greatly outweigh the disadvantages. The negative points of owning and using a USB flash drive can be easily avoided by careful use and being mindful of where the device is connected.
