Probably one of the most innovative technologies that came out of the computer industry, the pen drives have changed the way people store messages. Pen drives have come to be known as USB flash drives. These portable drives are NAND -type flash memory data storage devices which use a USB interface to transfer data to and from a computer. They are basically small, lightweight, removable and rewritable storage devices which can have storage capacities reaching more than 30 GB.

Pen drives or USB flash drives have left other portable storage devices behind especially the floppy disk, which at this time and age have become antiquated. The size, the faster transfer rate, capacity and reliability have made the pen drives the current choice among computer users on the go. And because of the USB interface, these storage devices can be used by any modern operating systems like Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

It was in 1998 that the very first flash drive was invented by President and CEO of M-Systems Flash Pioneers (Israel) Dov Moran. But development and marketing of the device was at the same time being made at Netac and at Trek 2000, Ltd. Whoever claimed to have made the very first prototype, it was certain that IBM was the first North American seller of a USB flash drive. The first flash drive sold in North America was the 8 MB “Memory Key” in 2001. Later on IBM introduced the 16 MB version, which was soon after followed by the 64 MB version. In less than two years, various pen drive brands have entered the market with sizes ranging from 8 MB to 16 MB to 32 MB and 64 MB. Plus Asian manufacturers have also released their own versions which are cheaper than their American and European counterparts.

When you open a pen drive, you’ll see a small printed circuit board underneath the plastic or metal casing. And because no parts are rotating, the pen drives are tougher and can be carried quite easily in one’s pockets, as a key fob, around the neck like a necklace, or on a lanyard. The circuit board commonly has a simple power circuitry and some surface-mounted integrated circuits (ICs). Other parts of the device also include a male type-A USB connector, USB mass storage controller, NAND flash memory chip and crystal oscillator. The latter creates the 12 MHz clock which facilitates the signaling and controlling the device’s data output.

People have found a lot of uses for the portable pen drives. Aside from being personal data transport devices, the flash drives have been used exclusively as a means of transferring files like recovery and antivirus software needed for PC repair. The portable and even fashionable flash drives have also been sued by system administrators in their job of maintenance, troubleshooting, and recovering various systems. Some manufacturers even created audio players on top of the solid design of the flash drives.

Flash drives are tough but they are not indestructible. Severe physical impact may cause damage or destroy the circuitry of a flash drive. Also, after repeated write and erase cycles, the memory device will most likely fail. But fortunately, it takes several hundred thousand cycles before a pen drive conks over. Another disadvantage of using the portable pen drives is the lack of write-protection mechanisms which could protect the drive from accidental erasure of files and from being contaminated by virus laden host computers.