PENDRIVE (colloquially: Pen Drive) - what are they and what types are there?

Types and speeds: USB devices can be divided into three groups according to their compliance with the accepted specifications:

• USB 1.1 (Full Speed) – devices that meet the conditions of this specification can operate at speeds of 1.5 Mb/s (0.1875 MB/s) or 12 Mbit/s (1.5 MB/s)
• USB 2.0 (Hi-Speed) – devices compliant with the new specification can operate at 480 Mb/s (60 MB/s), but in practice they only achieve speeds of 320 Mb/s (40MB/s). USB 2.0 devices are fully compatible with older devices.
• USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed) – Devices transfer data (when connected to a USB 3.0 port) at speeds of up to 4.8 Gbps (600 MB/s). The first devices appeared in 2009. For now, they achieve lower speeds than the standard due to the protocols they support. The drive can transfer data through both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports (transferring data through the USB 2.0 port at a correspondingly slower speed, of course).

Flash drives are used by most people who use a computer. Therefore, they must be small enough to put in your pocket and take with you. They are produced in various shapes of rectangular key rings, credit cards, as well as figurines of various characters or objects, and even round ones.

Use

More and more flash drives include, in addition to the external memory function, additional functions in the form of an mp3 player, voice recorder, FM radio, digital camera, etc.

Transfer your personal data

The most common use of these drives is to move and store personal files such as documents, apps, photos, music, and videos.

Computer Repair

They are successful in recovering data from portable computers with portable data recovery applications, as well as removing viruses or spyware from the infected computer.

Audio players

Flash drives equipped with a headphone output and almost all models use mini LCD or OLED displays. They support MP3, WMA, WAV, MIDI, MP4, AIFF, etc.

Booting Operating Systems

This feature is similar to LiveCD, which boots from the CD/DVD drive itself, for example, an operating system or a specific program without the need to install it, this feature is called LiveUSB.

Increase system memory

In the latest Microsoft operating systems (Windows Vista and Windows 7), the use of the ReadyBoost function allows you to increase the operating memory of the system by using the free memory of the connected flash drive or part of it. In the Linux operating system, mounting a flash drive, creates a file of a certain size (dd) on it, marks it as swap (mkswap) and adds it to the swap pool (swapon).

Data security

The latest flash drives are becoming more and more durable, resistant to shocks and even to falls from a height of several dozen meters. Waterproof and fireproof versions are also produced. You can also buy flash drives equipped with built-in software that requires you to enter a password before reading the data (often this data is encoded with special algorithms), and for more demanding users, there are versions equipped with a fingerprint reader, preventing unauthorized people from reading the files stored on the flash drive.