Flash Drives and Memory Sticks
A Flash
Drive is non-volatile memory. Unlike RAM, Flash Drives and
Memory Sticks do not need any power to save your data.
Flash Drives are popular, affordable and durable.
Flash Memory is used in phones and cameras. Older cameras used small
128 MB Flash Drives. Today, it is common to find Flash Drives with
2-8 GB of storage. An 8 GB Flash Drive is the equivalent of 100 CD-RWs
and 5,200 Floppies.
Will Flash Drives replace hard drives? Yes, eventually. It is an
attractive idea to carry the entire computer--Windows, applications,
and data--on something I can hold in my hand.
Things that spin wear out. As a engineer, solid state
is better than spinning disk drives.
One concern with Flash Drives is the finite number or
read-write cycles. This, too, will improve over time. As of this
writing, Flash Drives still cost much, much less per MB of storage.
That, too, will change soon.
Computers. Yea, we love them.