USB flash drives are convenient little gadgets. I remember the days when we were using 1.44 MB floppy drives to move things around. What a pain those were! The capacity was pitiful, giving rise to utilities designed to split up a single file among multiple floppies. Then CDs became the norm. CDs offer much higher capacity, but they do not operate like a hard drive. They are also pretty slow. DVDs offer even higher capacity, but you are still dealing with all the restrictions (and annoyances) of optical media.
USB flash drives are so much better (The advantages of USB Flash Drive). Today, they offer respectable capacities. USB 2.0 makes them pretty fast. The BIOS of many motherboards even has the capability of booting from a USB drive. They are more dependable then optical media because they cannot be scratched. They are more dependable than even hard drives because they have no moving parts. So, there are a lot of possibilities for these little sticks.
Below, I will go over the most useful uses for your USB flash drive.
- Personal data transport
- Secure storage of data, application and software files
- System administration
- Application carriers
- Computer forensics and law enforcement
- Booting operating systems
- Windows Vista and Windows 7 ReadyBoost
- Audio players
- Music storage and marketing
- In arcades
- Brand and product promotion
- Backup