The USB Flash Drive: A Linux Newbie's Best Friend

Recently, we covered the learning curve of a dedicated Windows user who imposed a 30-day immersion into Ubuntu on himself. Not surprisingly, installing Ubuntu, and some of the new kinds of hoops he had to jump through to do so, were among his chief complaints. Many dedicated Windows and Mac OS users don't realize that with a simple USB Flash drive, you can avoid having to install Linux locally altogether. There is much more you can do to dive quickly into using Linux with a Flash drive, whether you choose to locally install it on a computer or not, and here are some of the best resources toward this end.
CNet has a good visual tutorial up called "What to do with your USB Flash drive: Run Linux." The site notes:
"A Linux Live USB flash drive is a great way to try out Linux without making any changes to your computer. It's also handy to have around in case Windows won't boot--allowing access to your hard disks--or if you just want to run a system memory test."
The tutorial focuses on how to put Ubuntu on a USB Flash drive, after which a user can run Ubuntu directly from the Flash drive without having to fully install it on a computer. It also details how the site Pendrivelinux.com allows for the Flash drive installation in a couple of easy steps.
We've covered Pendrivelinux a number of times. The site lets you install many different types of Linux distros on a USB Flash drive, and turn Flash drives into easy ways to locally install Linux on a computer if you choose to. Pendrivelinux functions like a blog, with ongoing tutorials for lots of Linux distros that you can get going on a USB drive.
It also collects many useful posts for creating Boot CDs for Linux variants. In addition, it houses PenDriveApps, which is an awesome, categorized archive of portable applications for Windows, the Mac and Linux.WIth it, you can easily find everything from portable FTP applications, to portable media players, to portable translation applications.
For much more you can do with open source applications and a USB Flash drive, also look into PortableApps and MacLibre. These sites let you put a bushel of open source applications on a USB Flash drive, after which you can run them from any computer.

USB drive found in a pub contained data of 26,000 tenants

Storing data is getting easier by the day. First, it was computers, followed by laptops, net-books and now it is the pen-drive. Just hang it on your shirt or carry it in your pocket. That is movable data. It is a boon but at the same time, a curse if you do not keep it safely guarded.

A serious data breach

There was a recent case of a USB drive found unattended in a pub in South London. The drive contained carried data of around 26,000 social housing tenants and bank details of some 800 tenants


Breach details

Apparently, the USB drive owner worked for housing associations Lewisham Homes and Wandle Housing Association. The data belonged to the tenants of these housing associations. The USB drive was seen lying in the All Inn One pub. The authorities were immediately notified; fortunately, the data was not compromised.

According to Sally-Anne Poole, acting head of Enforcement at the ICO “Saving personal information on to an unencrypted memory stick is as risky as taking hard copy papers out of the office. Luckily, there is no suggestion that the data was misused. But this incident could so easily have been avoided if the information had been properly protected.”

The Lewisham Homes and Wandle Housing Association had breached the 1998 Data Protection Act by not encrypting the information of 26,000 people.

Action taken by the ICO

The ICO gave the housing bodies a stern warning and made them aware that they had clearly breached the Data Protection Act. Had the stick gotten into the hands of a hacker, all hell would have broken loose.

Reactions by security experts

According to Edy Almer, VP of product management at Safend: “It is good to see that data stored on the USB was most likely not compromised and that the immediate response from the breached party was to make things right. It is important to note it was a third party contractor that lost the data and not trained internal staff, thus highlighting the need to selectively block or encrypt all devices connecting to your network in order to protect sensitive data.”

Mark Fullbrook, UK and Ireland director at Cyber-Ark’ reacted: “This is yet another example of the poor data protection policies operating within organisations today. Using a memory stick to transport sensitive information may be convenient, but it’s certainly not secure and whilst in this case the memory stick was returned to its rightful owners, should it have fallen into the wrong hands the repercussions could have been severe”

Action taken by the housing associations

Lewisham Homes has revised its data security procedure and the contractor/owner of the stick has been dismissed.

What can be done to protect data?

Using encrypted software is the need of the hour. Be it an organization or an individual, if you are carrying data, it has to be protected, no matter how what it is.

Use Alertsec

Organisations, especially corporate giants, have to have an information security policy in place that proves they have taken necessary steps and measures to safeguard the information they gathered. If these policies are not adhered to, the regulators may prosecute.

Alertsec Xpress is used by organizations that have recognized the need to protect their information. Customers range from single-user sole traders and consultants to multinational companies with a large number of offices around the globe. Over 4 million users worldwide use Alertsec Xpress’s Check Point Full Disk Encryption

How to create a bootable USB flash drive to install Windows 8 Developer Preview

Like many folks, after watching the BUILD keynote this morning, I couldn't wait to get home and install Windows 8 Developer Preview on my laptop. The instructions for installing Windows 8 are simple enough. The only fly in the ointment is that installing Windows 8 requires a DVD to create an install package.

Of course, since I haven't used an optical drive in years, I didn't have a blank DVD and I didn't want to wait until the morning to buy some. But I did have a USB flash drive and so I decided to create a bootable USB flash drive to install Windows 8.

To create a bootable USB flash drive the easy way, you can download the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool from the Microsoft Store. If you feel adventurous and are comfortable with command line tools, below are the step-by-step instructions for installing Windows 8 Developer Preview from a USB flash drive. But be warned, if you are not comfortable with command line tools, downloading the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool is a much better option and will save you the effort of reading the remainder of this blog.

Instructions (using the command line)
At a high level, the steps are:

Mount the Windows 8 Developer Preview ISO image on your computer
Format a USB flash drive
Copy the Windows 8 files onto the USB flash drive
Make the USB flash drive bootable
Install Windows 8 from the bootable flash drive

Step 1: Mount the Windows 8 Developer Preview ISO image on your computer
The first step is to mount the ISO image on your computer. Since Windows 7 doesn’t have the capability to mount an ISO image, you’ll have to use a 3rd party tool.

Download the Windows Developer Preview ISO image (choose one of the three available)
Using your favorite ISO image software, mount the ISO image on your computer
To check that the ISO image mounted successfully, you should be able to browse the Windows 8 files, as shown below.



Step 2: Format a USB flash drive
In case you’re wondering how big of a USB flash drive you need, an 8GB drive is perfect since it can accommodate any of the three available ISO images. Here are the steps to format a USB flash drive.

Insert a USB flash drive into your computer
Start a Command Prompt as an Administrator and type diskpart. This starts the Disk Partition tool which you need to use to format the flash drive. Once you see the DISKPART command prompt, type in the following commands
DISKPART> list disk /* shows list of active disks */
DISKPART> select disk # /* # is the number for your USB flash drive */
DISKPART> clean /* deletes any existing partitions on the USB flash drive */
DISKPART> create partition primary /* create a primary partition on the USB flash drive */
DISKPART> select partition 1 /* select the newly created partition */
DISKPART> active /* make the new partition active */
DISKPART> format FS=NTFS /* format the USB drive with NTFS file system */
DISKPART> assign /* assign a volume and drive letter to the USB drive */
DISKPART> exit /* exit Disk Partition */
At this point, your USB flash drive should be showing up in Windows Explorer and have a drive letter assigned to it, e.g. F:\.

Step 3: Make the USB flash drive bootable
We just need to make the USB flash drive bootable before copying the files. To do this, you can use the Boot Sector Registration Tool (bootsect.exe) which is located in the boot folder of the Windows 8 ISO image.

Start a Command Prompt as an Administrator and CHDIR into the boot folder of the Windows 8 ISO image, e.g. I:\boot where I:\ is the drive where the ISO image is mounted
Type bootsect /nt60 E: /* where E: is the drive assigned to the USB flash drive */
You should see the following confirmation after bootsec.exe completes:



Step 4: Copy the Windows 8 files onto the USB flash drive
From a command line, use XCOPY to copy the Windows 8 files to the USB flash drive . In the example below, I:\ is the drive where the ISO image is mounted. F:\ is the USB flash drive.

XCOPY I:\*.* F:\ /E /F /H

Step 5: Install Windows 8 from the bootable flash drive
Finally, follow these instructions to install Windows 8 on your computer.

Remove your USB flash drive from your "source" computer and insert it into the "target" computer where you want to install Windows 8
On the computer where you are installing Windows 8, press the power button to turn on the computer
During boot up, select the USB flash drive to boot from (if you don't see the USB flash drive as an option, you may have to adjust your BIOS settings)
Follow the instructions to install Windows 8 Developer Preview
Here is a screen shot from the boot manager on my computer showing the USB flash drive as an option.



I installed Windows 8 Developer Preview on a vanilla Dell Inspiron 15R laptop which unfortunately doesn't have touch (or any other sensors for that matter).



The personalization steps in Windows 8 Developer Preview are really quick.





And here is the final screenshot of my shiny new Windows 8 installation!

Buy Online Removable Media Data Recovery Software

Advance and easy to use data recovery software to salvage lost important data from fixed drive or USB mass storage devices like Memory card (SDHC, Multimedia cards, PC card etc), Digital audio players, USB drive, Mobile phones, Digital cameras, Digital audio players etc in no time.

USB flash drive to be a Windows 7 installation platform

In a recent 10 Things blog, “10 Cool Things You Can Do with a USB Flash Drive,” I presented 10 tasks that you can perform with a flash drive, including booting an operating system. However, I have since discovered a technique on the Microsoft TechNet Magazine site that describes how you can use a USB flash drive to install Windows 7.

This technique is very cool for two reasons: First, a flash drive is much more responsive than an optical drive, since it doesn’t rely on physically moving components, so the installation procedure will be faster. Second, it provides an easy way to install Microsoft Windows 7 on a system that doesn’t have a DVD drive, such as a netbook.

Since this technique would be a valuable addition to the 10 Things list as well as to users planning on installing Windows 7 on a netbook or who want to be able to quickly and easily install Windows 7, such as the Family Pack, on multiple systems without having to mess around with a DVD, I thought that I would examine the technique.

In this edition of the Windows Vista and Windows 7 Report, I’ll show you how to use the DiskPart utility to configure a bootable USB flash drive that you can then use to install the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system.

This blog post is also available in PDF format in a free TechRepublic download.

Getting started

Of course, in order to employ this technique you’ll need a USB flash drive that is big enough to hold the contents of the Windows 7 DVD. The Windows 7 RC DVD is about 2.5GB, and you can expect that the RTM DVD will be at least that if not more. For my test system I am using a 4GB USB flash drive.

Keep in mind that the procedure we will use will completely reformat the USB flash drive. So you want to make sure that you back up any data that you have on the drive before you begin.

The systems on which you want to install Windows 7 via the USB flash drive have to be able to be configured to boot from a USB drive. Most new systems have the capability to boot from a USB flash drive, and the operation can usually be configured in the BIOS or by simply pressing a certain key during bootup. You’ll need to check your specific hardware in order to be sure.

Using the DiskPart utility

As you may know, the DiskPart utility is a command-line version of the Disk Management snap-in and is designed to allow you to manage disks, partitions, or volumes from within scripts or directly from a command prompt. We can use the DiskPart command in Windows Vista or in Windows 7 to configure a USB flash drive to be a bootable device. (Keep in mind that Windows XP’s DiskPart command is unable to create a bootable USB flash drive.)

To begin, connect your USB flash drive to a computer on which you will be preparing the drive. For my example, I’ll be using a Windows Vista system.

Now, locate the command Prompt shortcut on the Start menu, right-click on it, and select the Run as Administrator command. Then, respond appropriately to the UAC. You can now launch the DiskPart utility by typing DiskPart on the command line. You’ll then see the DISKPART prompt, as shown in Figure A.

Figure A



DiskPart has its own command-line environment complete with a special prompt.

Now that you’re in the DiskPart environment, you’ll need to locate the USB flash drive using the List Disk command. As you can see in Figure B, the List Disk command has identified my USB flash drive as Disk 5. I can verify that my USB flash drive is indeed Disk 5 by checking the Size column, which lists the size as 3906MB, which is roughly 4GB.

Figure B



Using the List Disk command displays all the disks in the system.

(If you have difficulty identifying your USB flash drive using the List Disk command, you can try the List Volume command, which will provide the drive letter as well as the label, both of which can help you to identify the drive.)

Once you identify the drive number of your USB flash drive, you will need to set the focus of the DiskPart environment on that disk. (This is an extremely important step–Make sure that you select the correct drive or you could accidentally destroy valuable data!) On my example, the USB flash drive is Disk 5, so I will use the command Select Disk 5, as shown in Figure C.

Figure C



To shift the focus over to the USB flash drive you’ll use the Select Disk command.

Now that your USB flash drive has the focus, you need to remove all the partition or volume formatting information from the disk. To do that, you’ll use the Clean command. The Clean operation should occur rather quickly. When it is done, you will see a success message like the one shown in Figure D.

Figure D



In order to start with a clean slate, you’ll use the Clean command to remove all partition and volume information from the USB flash drive.

You’ll now use the Create Partition Primary command to create a primary partition on the disk. After you create the partition, you will see a success message and the focus will automatically shift to the new partition. You’ll use the Active command to mark the partition as active, as shown in Figure E. Marking the partition as active will essentially allow the BIOS to recognize that the partition is a valid bootable system partition.

Figure E



Using the Create Partition Primary and the Active commands, you’ll create a bootable partition on the USB flash drive.

With the partition created and active, you’re now ready to quickly format the drive and set up the FAT32 file system using the Format fs=FAT32 quick command. (While you could format the drive as NTFS, the typical way to format a USB flash drive is to use FAT32.) Once the drive is formatted, you’ll use the Assign command, as shown in Figure F, to allow the drive to be assigned a drive letter.

Figure F



To complete the preparation, you’ll format the drive and assign it a drive letter.

The USB flash drive is now ready. At this point, you can use the Exit command to exit the DiskPart environment and then close the Command Prompt window.

Copying the Windows 7 files

Copying the Windows 7 files is easy. Just open Windows Explorer, access the Windows 7 DVD, select all the files and folders, and then drag and drop them on the USB flash drive icon, as shown in Figure G. Keep in mind that the copy operation will take a little while to complete.

Figure G



Once the USB flash drive is ready to go, you can copy all the files and folders from the Windows 7 DVD to the newly prepared bootable drive.

Installing Windows 7 from the USB flash drive

With the contents of the Windows 7 DVD on a bootable USB flash drive, installing the operating system is a snap. Just boot the system from the USB drive and the installation procedure will begin as it normally would, as shown in Figure H. However, the installation procedure will actually run quicker off a USB flash drive since it doesn’t contain any physically moving components.

Figure H



Once the system boots from the USB flash drive, the Windows 7 installation will begin as normal, but it will actually run faster.

What’s your take?

Have you ever wanted to be able to install an operating system from a USB flash drive? Now that you know how to do it, are you likely to employ this technique to install Windows 7 on a Netbook or on multiple computers? As always, if you have comments or information to share about these topics, please take a moment to drop by the TechRepublic Community Forums and let us hear from you.

Germany leads Europe for USB drive data security

The Ponemon Institute research also denotes marked differences in the approach and implementation of USB drive security from country to country.
The European study confirms the pressing need for organizations to adopt more secure USB products and policies. A total of 3,204 IT practitioners with an average of 10.75 years of IT or IT security experience in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Nordics, Netherlands, Switzerland and Poland, were surveyed and all acknowledged the importance of USB drives from a productivity standpoint.
Across Europe, 71 percent of respondents confirmed that their companies do not have the technologies to prevent or quickly detect the download of confidential data onto USB drives by unauthorized individuals.
The statistic shows most organizations are ignoring the risks of using unencrypted USB drives, resulting in most companies – 62 percent of those questioned – having suffered a loss of confidential or sensitive data because of missing USB drives in the last two years.
When comparing individual European countries, perceptions and practices about the importance of USB security is highest in Germany – with 62 percent agreeing that their organization has an adequate USB security policy in place to prevent employee misuse.
On the contrary, France and Poland are most at risk as a result of employees’ practices – 85 percent of respondents in France and 83 percent in Poland say that employees use USB drives without obtaining advance permission to do so.
Evidence of widespread compromise is apparent:
75 percent of respondents say employees in their companies are using USB drives without obtaining advance permission to do so.
A staggering 63 percent of respondents confirmed employees lose USB drives without notifying appropriate authorities all the time or very frequently.
France, UK and Poland have the highest rate of data breach as a result of a missing USB drives.

secure USB drive

Taking inspiration from Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, a US startup has fused a USB flash drive with a ‘Cryptex’ device, a metal cylinder that can only be opened by setting the correct combination on a rotating barrel.

The latest Crypteks (notice the different spelling) is not the first device of its kind – designs have been circulating on the Internet since the Da Vinci code resurrected what is probably an older idea – but it does look like the most interesting to date.

The external 8cm barrel comprises five aluminium alloy rotating rings on which each has printed the 26 letters of the English alphabet. Removing the USB flash drive from within the cylinder involves entering the correct combination of which there are 14,348,907 possible combinations thanks to the decision to adopt letters on each ring rather than numbers.

The USB drive contained within the barrel uses 256-bit AES encryption, adding another layer of security to the physical design, with a customisable auto-format option for incorrectly-entered passwords.

If you like the Crypteks is really a sophisticated version of the common barrel combination lock which happens to contain a secure USB drive.

Some might see it as over-engineered. Secure USB keys employing AES encryption can nowadays be bought fairly cheaply and offer good levels of security for the money. The barrel device added by the Crypteks doesn’t appear to offer much added security for what is a considerable price premium. It is not clear whether the concealed USB drive is also tamper proof.

The Michigan-based designers claim they have enough money via the online Kickstarter incubator to start manufacturing the drives “in time for the holidays.”

The development model requires seed backers to pledge money in return for drives. Capacities will be 4GB, 8GB, 16GB. The price has yet to be announced by works out at around $150 for the 16GB drive for every sponsor backing the project.

USB Flash Memory: Premium Storage

data: USB flash drives, CDs and other physical media, external hard drives, online storage in the cloud...
So what are USB flash drive advantages compared to all the alternatives? Are USB flash drives the best storage solution commonly available today?

The most honest answer is: sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on your particular needs. But USB flash drives are best is one respect: it’s always the most flexible choice. So let’s look into this and compare the advantages of each storage option and one at a time...

USB flash drive advantages over CDs

CDs are a wonderful archiving solution: you can burn your data to a CD-R or CD-RW, and then store the CD in a safe (preferably fire-proof) place. It’s also an easy-to-mail solution. But for everyday use, USB flash drive advantages outnumber the benefits of CDs.

USB drives offer orders of magnitude more storage than CDs. A single USB drive can hold the equivalent of a dozen CDs and still fit in your pocket! Plus, USB drives can house programs in addition to data: it’s possible to run an entire operating system off a USB drive. While you can do this with a LiveCD, you can’t save your personal customizations, configurations or data to a CD the way you can a USB. Advantage: USB flash best.

USB flash drive advantages over external hard drives

Here, the opposite is true: external hard drives offers much higher storage capacities than a USB drive. If you have a lot of data to store - maybe a music or video collection - that you might want to hook up to different local computers, an external hard drive could work well.

But for true portability, is USB flash best here too? Yes. External hard drives are portable only compared to internal hard drives, but they can’t compete with a USB drive. Plus, flash drives use solid-state memory, meaning there are no moving parts. Hard drives with those moving parts are much more susceptible to damage and lost data when being moved around.

USB flash drive advantages over online storage

Tons of services allow you to store files online. This is a great solution for easy, near-universal access. However, its flexibility again makes USB flash best. First, USB drives can run your preferred programs and operating systems in addition to storing data. Second, you don’t need an internet connection to work off a USB drive. Third, if the internet connection is painfully slow, a USB drive will zip along at its own speed. This is a major advantage to flash: speed. Finally, if you’re working from a location whose firewall prohibits access to the sites with your files you’d be surprised how often legit sites get inadvertently blocked, you can still get to your files with a USB drive.

Your priorities decide if these USB flash drive advantages make USB flash best for your needs.

In short, we can’t really answer the question in all situations because it depends. So you tell us: is USB flash best for you? Can you think of advantages we’ve missed? We can say without hesitation that a USB flash drive has the advantage in adaptability: it can simply do more, more quickly and more easily than any other single alternative.

Thank you for your questions! Subscribe to our RSS feeds for future answers, and send us an email with your own question!

Making a Choice Between Large Versus Small Capacity USB Flash Drives

We’ve all been there—you have a few or more gigs of digital data and you need to figure out where to store it. The question is, do you invest in a larger capacity USB flash drive or multiple smaller drives? Size does matter to an extent in these circumstances except that there’s not a universal answer. Before you take the purchase plunge, here are a few key factors that could affect your decision.
- A large capacity custom flash drive will give you more space for your money. Generally, more storage translates into a significant price decrease that can be seen with the addition of every gig. For example, a 1GB drive may cost you $6 while an 8GB drive can be bought for just two dollars more.
- Consider your storage plans. If you will need to hold some extremely large files (1GB or 2GB apiece) a smaller flash drive may not have the room or speed performance of a larger drive. What’s more is that you may not want to divide one project into multiple parts for smaller USB flash drives because it could just create unnecessary prep work for you.
- Think about separating work and play. One advantage to having several smaller flash drives as opposed to a more than 8GB USB drive is that you can designate roles to each device to better organize your files. After all, who would want to mix family vacation photos alongside your corporate PowerPoint presentation?
- Check its specs. A few larger capacity flash drives use 3-bit MLC NAND chips. While these allow more storage per cell, some have been known to be less than reliable compared to sturdier SLC counterparts. A higher risk of data loss is the last thing you need with a large document, video or library of pictures.
- Back it up. Premium USB has always taken steps to strongly reiterate the importance of backing up all of your data. Multiple small capacity USB flash drives may give some extra reassurance—not putting all of your eggs in one basket so to speak. However, should you choose an 8GB, 16GB, 32GB flash drive or higher, consider also investing in another form of backup, be it extra custom USB drives or CDs and DVDs. There are countless storage combinations; the end result is up to your needs.
Which flash drive storage method do you prefer? One larger USB flash drive or a bunch of smaller ones?

Flat Rate Pricing Explained

We at FlashDrivePros.com get asked all the time if our listed prices are truly "flat rate," or if we are going to raise the price once we have the flash drive in our possession. The answer is that we never, even raise the price for our data recovery services once we receive a flash drive. We believe that having a simple, transparent, flat-rate pricing system gives our customers the peace of mind of knowing exactly how much they will spend before ever sending us their flash drive. The only time we would ever require any additional money would be if we had to order parts, which is rare. So if other companies’ price structures seem confusing, we’re happy to offer one that makes sense, and more importantly, won’t leave you paying several hundred percent more than you expected.

Here are some tips to consider no matter what company you choose to recovery your data:

Get a full explanation of the cost before you ship - Make sure the rate is clear. If you send your flash drive and get a different rate after it arrives, your only options are to either pay the higher rate or have them return the drive, which can takes weeks from some providers.
Make sure they are reputable - verify testimonials, just because they have worked with big entities or have published "quotes" on their website, does not mean they are the best choice.
Confusing rate explanation - if the provider makes it confusing by adding tons of explanation on how to quote you, just run! Watch out for the "*" asterisks and read the fine print, if you can find it.
Don't choose just by price alone - often times we choose the cheapest provider, and end up costing us more down the road. Choose by reputation, reliability and guarantee.
Yes, Guarantee - is worth repeating. If they can't fix it, you shouldn't have to pay.

3.5" FDD (Floppy Disk Drive) is Dead! Long live the Zipmem USB Drive!

Currently this magnetic medium is fast getting replaced by the â flash Româ drives that they also know by Pen Drive or USB Drive. This new medium is killing the elderly magnetic medium for its reliability, speed and ever growing capacity.



Do you keep in mind the last time you used the FDD drive of your computer, and for what? Chance is in case you have used it then it would be for some emergency booting of the computer, or for recovery of your broken OS. Meaning you would have not used it for knowledge transfer using this medium.

Historicallyin the past the secondary storage is always in the realm of change. Know-how and needs are always pushing the medium smaller, faster, more reliable, secure and of expanding capacity. like some ten years back the five.25â dives were replaced by this three.5â drives for smaller size and bigger capacity.

History

Paper Punch Card

History of secondary storage is calm fascinating, as it's seen the use of papers to silicon to optical medium. With each generation it gets better, faster and smaller is size and always increasing the storage capacity.

Floppy Drive (8â)

Paper Punch cards used initially as the first outside storage tool. It used paper card/roll with holes as knowledge. Meaning a hole was zero, and no hole was. Programmers used to punch the card for providing input. Card printers were there to punch the output for storage.

One time the magnetic media began to be used for storage, paper media was quickly made obsolete. Magnetic disks of round shape emerged as the standard for secondary storage tool. It became popular as it was more robust and handy than the paper roll, and could store more knowledge.

Further advancement in the material & magnetic expertise provided better density & provided much higher storage capacity in smaller area. Now the disks also began to become double sided providing even more knowledge storage area in the same size disks.

Floppy Drive (five.25â)

This media peaked with the three.5â FDD that was tiny & sturdy to be carred in the denims pocket. Its case also provided cover even for the area that is used for reading, leading to more protection from dust & humidity even when the floppy was not in any cover.

Floppy Drive (three.5â)

This drive released in 1994 by a company called Iomega could holding 100MB of knowledge. This also makes use of the magnetic coating like the regular floppy disks, usb hard drivebut of higher quality & of superior expertise. Due to this it needs specialized drives for reading & writing on this media. This made it a lovely backup drive (like tape drives), but not lovely for using it on any machine. Currently generation of Zip Disks can hold upto 250MB of knowledge.

Zip Drive

Flash Drive (USB Drive)

Also often called Pen Drive is the next revolution in secondary transportable storage tool. Initially emerged with couple of MB storage capacity, it quickly gained attraction due to its solid state rugged construction & its capability of being used on any computer equipped with USB port. Initially it needed a specific driver to be installed on the earlier OS in order to be used, but later, due to its universally open standard & rise in use of the USB port, its support was provided natively in the OS. (Windows/Macintosh/Linux supports it natively out of the box).

This standardization of protocol has lead to not only popularity of the USB flash drives, but has also provided a common way for other media to act as drive by this protocol. So now there's storage products making use of this standard to become USB drives (also called USB Mass Storage). Example includes:
- USB Hard Disk Drives
- Zip Drive with USB interface
- digital camera acting as an USB drives for accessing the photographs directly on any computer
- PDAs like Palm that already connect to the computer using USB acts as a USB drive for accessing the knowledge stored in its memory & SD/MMC Card
- Mp3 players that doubles as USB drive!!

So now virtually nothing more is necessary for this drive to work in the event you have a computer with a standard USB port. Though the manufacturers are also providing additional features to the hardware like encryption, but these features usually requires additional software/driver to be installed in order to be used. & since there is not much standard for these features yet it is mostly tool specific & is largely ignored for its lack of compatibility.

Currently one GB USB flash drives are available, & bigger drives are on the horizon.

The list of applications are getting bigger & bigger, ultimately making this drive a very popular & successful.
As mentioned above this medium is also getting popular & is popular chiefly for higher speed & capacity than what is currently provided by the USB flash drive. On the flip side it is still fragile (as having moving element) & bulkier than the flash drive.


Portable USB HDD


Last but not the least is this future product. This is the media of the future that makes use of expertise that is still in its infancy - holography. Though holography & holograms are not new & was discovered in the late 1940s, but its application for knowledge storage is something new. A company called InPhase Technologies is of the forerunners in this field that has prototyped disks that can hold 200GB to one.6TB of knowledge. This external usb driveexpertise makes use of lasers for reading & writing the knowledge.

Why FDD is dying

Using this one.44MB floppy disk drive was always bit unreliable. They can all recall the "Sector 0 Bad" error, & myriad number of utilities supporting various recovery & advanced modifications like:

- marking sectors bad (NDD - Norton Disk Doctor & its surface scan (ultimately acquired by Symantec & is part of its Norton Utilities Toolset right now). - Another popular utility was to generate another zero sector if the actual was gone bad. So what is remaining in the way of death of this magnetic medium? Only time! As of now few features still needs the magnetic floppy disk drive, like for booting for the first time, or for upgrading BIOS of the motherboard etc. This is due to itâs (FDDs) simple of programming at the lower level & more importantly for its inbuilt support in the BIOS program. So as soon as the modern BIOS start supporting the USB drives (motherboards have now began to come with this support) the floppy days are numbered.

Current Support of USB Devices by the Motherboard/BIOS

The current motherboards & BIOS have started the support of usb thumb drive as boot tool. Meaning you can have your whole operating method on this tool, or basically use it as the bootable floppy (imaging carrying your whole work including the programs & applications on a small keychain). Depending on the mode of usage resources are obtainable on the Web for configuring your USB drive. checkout the links provided below where it provides tips & tricks of doing so.

Speaking of simple of use of using this feature, the issue lies with the (Windows) OS right now that does not support making the USB drive bootable. It does let you format the USB drive & choose the file method format, but Make Booteble option is not present at all. Seldom mind as there's lot of tools & utilities obtainable (for all popular OS) that supports making it bootable, though you will must struggle a bit.

Future


As you see there is no need of Floppy Disks for any use/operation & is getting replaced speedy by the USB drives. Already major computer vendors have made FDD as optional feature. Now the time has come of the USB flash drive over the demise of the FDD.

Visit author's site for more information about the author as well as get access to more articles on various topics -

Pen drive two GB capacity obtainable with Om Nanotech Pvt. Ltd. located in different parts of the world including India, Singapore and the United States. The product list comprises of products like Ram,Micron Memory part, DRAM, storage memory cards, usb disk drive and far more.
Posted by zipmem at 0

kolaveri Got 1 Corers Hit One week

USB Flash Drive Price Trends

What a difference a few years can make! The USB flash drive prices of today are not very recognizable compared to those of yesterday�and that�s a nice thing. Premium USB is prepared to take you on a trip down memory lane (bad pun intended) to see how far we�ve come & where we�re headed.
First however, they must give you a small point of view on storage capacity. A number of the first commercial flash drives were 128MB & 256MB. Less than 100 images can be stored on 128MB while 256MB gives you a small over 150 images or 50 songs. Today�s average 4GB flash drive on the other hand can hold two full length movies or over two thousand images. A 16GB USB drive holds five times the flicks of its four gig counterpart. Alternately, it's the capability to store over 300,000 documents.
Now we�ve come to prices. In 2003, a standard 128MB flash drive cost $60 & a 256MB flash drive cost $100. Skip ahead years to late 2006 when a 4GB USB was priced at about $60. In early 2007, the cost of these drives dropped about $10.
Over a year later in late 2008, $60 could buy you a 16GB flash drive while $70 could even buy you 32GB. At the beginning of 2009, a 16GB drive was priced around $25. This past December, a 32GB USB flash drive was less than $40. Today, a 16GB USB drive is about $20. At Premium USB, a 4GB flash drive will cost only about $10. Additionally, today�s flash drives are not only more affordable, but they also boast more custom designs & more features like encryption or virus protection.
Flash drive prices are not immune to fluctuations, however. There's annual events that occur affecting how much you pay for these storage devices. Chinese companies supply plenty of of the parts for promotional USB drives. As a result, when Chinese New Year comes along in February, production shuts down for two to three weeks, driving up demand & therefore prices.
These USB prices usually settle down between March & April & are at a low around June before holiday production ramps up at the tail finish of the summer. The beginning of the 4th quarter often reflects a number of the lowest prices of the year. Production obstacles including facility power outages or natural disasters can also generate volatile spikes in prices.
However, as NAND flash expertise continues to evolve & improve, the long term outlook is that USB drives will only continue to boast greater capacities & capabilities at more wallet-friendly prices. Your four gig or 16 gig flash drive of tomorrow will continue to be less expensive than your 128MB drive from 8 years ago.
Do you keep in mind how much you paid for your first USB flash drive?

10 cool things you can do with a USB flash drive

1: Run portable applications

In addition to storing your data, you can run portable applications from a USB flash drive. For example, OpenOffice, which is a complete office suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package, and database, is available as a portable application. Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are also available as portable applications. When you combine the office suite with the ability to surf the Web and check email, you’ll be able to take your most vital computing applications with you wherever you go — right in your pocket.

If that’s not enough, you can choose other applications to install on your USB flash drive fromPortableApps.com (Figure A). You can even install an entire prepackaged suite of applications that includes such things as an audio player, games, an antivirus utility, and a handy menu system.

Figure A

The PortableApps.com suite comes with a menu system to allow you to easily access your portable applications.

2: Boot an operating system

If you want to do more than just run your own applications, you might want to consider booting an entire operating system from your USB flash drive. You can boot either Windows or Linux from a USB flash drive; however, the process is not an exact science and you may be in for a technical adventure.

Fortunately, there are some guides you can follow. To learn how to boot Windows XP from a USB flash drive, see the article Creating a bootable USB flash drive for Windows XP. To learn how to boot a version of Linux from a USB flash drive, see the article Puppy Linux teaches an old dog new tricks.

3: Connect to a wireless network

If you have a wireless network, you can use the Wireless Network Setup Wizard in Windows XP or the Windows Connect Now (WCN) feature built into Vista to save wireless network configuration information to a USB flash drive. You can then use your drive to quickly and easily connect another computer or a WCN-compatible device, such as a router or printer, to your wireless network. To learn more about using the Wireless Network Setup Wizard, see the Help And Support Center, which is accessible from Windows XP’s Start menu. To learn more about using the Windows Connect Now feature, see Windows Help And Support, which is accessible from Windows Vista’s Start menu.

4: Create a password reset disk

A password reset disk can really come in handy if you forget the password to your user account on a Windows system that is not a part of a domain. If you find yourself in that situation, you can use the password reset disk to reset your password and quickly get back into your user account. In Windows Vista, you can use USB flash drive rather than a floppy disk as a password reset disk (Figure B). For details on how to do so, see the article Create a Vista password reset disk using a USB flash drive.

Figure B

You can use your USB flash drive as a password reset disk.

5: Boost performance

If you’re running Windows Vista, you can use a USB flash drive to speed up your system with the ReadyBoost technology. ReadyBoost can use the storage space on a USB Flash drive as an additional memory cache to aid the memory cache on your hard disk. And because flash memory is more responsive than a hard disk, with its physical moving parts, the memory cache provided by ReadyBoost can significantly improve system responsiveness.

Using ReadyBoost is easy. You just insert your USB flash drive into your Vista system and follow the onscreen prompts to configure and use ReadyBoost. If you want more details, check out the article How SuperFetch and ReadyBoost work together.

6: Manage it

If all you really want to do with your USB flash drive is transport data, and you’re running Windows XP, you can do so more efficiently with the Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager (Figure C). Once you have installed this manager, you can easily copy files to and from your drive, back up and restore the entire flash drive to and from your hard disk, change the drive label, and even create an autorun.inf file to launch Drive Manager automatically when you plug in the drive. To learn more about and download the USB Flash Drive Manager visit the Microsoft TechNet Magazine site.

Figure C

The Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager provides you with a host of features, such as drive backup.

7: Use it as an MP3 player

Would you like to be listening to music when you’re using a computer at the office, but you don’t have an MP3 player? If so, you can use a USB flash drive as an MP3 player along with Windows Media Player and a set of headphones. Just copy your MP3 files to your USB flash drive, plug it into your computer, and direct Windows Media Player to build a library of the songs on your drive. You can use all of Windows Media Player’s playback features, such as playlists and favorites, to easily customize your music listening experience. And best of all, you won’t have to worry about running low on battery power.

8: Password-protect it

If you use a USB flash drive to transport sensitive data that you would prefer to protect from prying eyes, should you lose the drive, Rohos Mini Drive (Figure D) can safeguard that data. This security tool allows you to create a secret partition on the drive and then password-protect/encrypt that partition, thus protecting any documents you copy to that partition via the utility’s file manager. You can download (and read a review of) Rohos Mini Drive at Download.com.

Figure D

Using Rohos Mini Drive, you can secure sensitive files on your USB flash drive.

9: Run a Web site from it

If you are a Web developer, you may be interested to know that with Server2Go, you can easily run a Web server that supports Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Perl right from a USB flash drive. You can use Server2Go right out of the box without any installation. It runs on all versions of Windows, supports most common browsers, and is completely free. To a developer, the benefits of having a portable Web server on a USB drive are numerous. For example, imagine being able to carry a live Web site demo into a sales pitch meeting. For more information about this package, visit theServer2Go site.

10: Lock your PC

Have you ever seen a movie in which a person in some secret government installation simply inserts and removes a card to log in and log out of a PC? If you thought that idea was cool, you’ll definitely want to investigate Predator (Figure E). Once installed and configured, this little freeware utility will allow you to turn a USB flash drive into a key you can use to lock and unlock your computer.

Figure E

With Predator, you can use a USB flash drive as a key to lock and unlock your computer.

While the USB flash drive is connected to your computer, everything works as it normally would. Once you remove the USB flash drive, your computer is locked down — the keyboard and mouse are disabled and the screen darkens. To unlock your computer, you just plug in the USB flash drive and the computer will be unlocked and you can begin using it. To learn more about Predator, and/or to download it, visit the developer’s Web site.

---

Finally: 10 Things… the newsletter!

Get the key facts on a wide range of technologies, techniques, strategies, and skills with the help of the concise need-to-know lists featured in TechRepublic’s 10 Things newsletter, delivered every 

Flash Drive (USB Drive)

Also known as Pen Drive is the next revolution in secondary portable storage device. Initially emerged with couple of MB storage capacity, it quickly gained attraction due to its solid state rugged construction and its capability of being used on any computer equipped with USB port. Initially it needed a specific driver to be installed on the earlier OS in order to be used, but later, due to its universally open standard and rise in use of the USB port, its support was provided natively in the OS. (Windows/Macintosh/Linux supports it natively out of the box).

So now virtually nothing more is needed for this drive to work if you have a computer with a standard USB port. Though the manufacturers are also providing additional features to the hardware like encryption, but these features generally requires additional software/driver to be installed in order to be used. And since there is not much standard for these features yet it is mostly device specific and is largely ignored for its lack of compatibility.
 

This standardization of protocol has lead to not only popularity of the USB flash drives, but has also provided a common way for other media to act as drive via this protocol. So now there are storage products making use of this standard to become USB drives (also called USB Mass Storage). Example includes:
- USB Hard Disk Drives
- Zip Drive with USB interface
- digital camera acting as an USB drive for accessing the photographs directly on any computer
- PDAs like Palm that already connect to the computer using USB acts as a USB drive for accessing the data stored in its memory and SD/MMC Card
- Mp3 players that doubles as USB drive!!
 

The list of applications are getting bigger and bigger, ultimately making this drive a very popular and successful.

Currently 1 GB USB flash drives are available, and bigger drives are on the horizon.

Antivirus USB Flash Drives: ClamWin

You're on the road a lot and like to use your USB flash drives on different computers? You take computer security seriously and you have the habit of scanning both your USB flash drives and your host computer for viruses on a regular basis? Let's hope so, or else you'd better start to protect yourself and your USB flash drives against malicious software and computer viruses asap!

We're glad to introduce to you a solid and powerful open source solution that enables you to scan your PC and/or your USB flash drive by running a portable application straight and conveniently from your USB thumbdrive.

Learn more about the benefits of using this powerful antivirus solution for USB flash drives, iPhones and other portable media devices which is also completely open source and purely copyleft GPL licensed...

An important thing to keep in mind when using USB flash drives is that they can be used to spread viruses or malware between computers. You need to protect your valuable data, files and your private information.

Especially when you use your USB flash drives in public places like your school, university or in an internet cafe it's very important to take security seriously and take the necessary steps to protect your privacy.

Because unknown host computers and untrusted machines may compromise your data, you should always use a solid antivirus program on your primary PC. Also, it's important to update the virus definitions regularly. This way you can ensure that you well protected against the newest bad-warez, viruses and malware out there, and you'll be able to keep both your USB flash drives and your computers clean while protecting your data. So what do you do need to protect yourself?

You need a solid antivirus solution for portable SSDs, iPods and USB flash drives.
Our suggestion: ClamWin Portable.

ClamWin is a widely recognized open source antivirus scanner that is based on the ClamAV engine, a state of the art open source (GPL) anti-virus toolkit for UNIX that was originally designed especially for e-mail scanning and for usage on mail spools and email gateways.

Among the many features of ClamWin you'll find characteristics of a mature and sophisticated antivirus solution that is very well suitable for USB flash drives and other portable memory media such as MP3 players and iPhones. These include the following features:

• High detection rates for viruses and spyware
• Scanning Scheduler
• Automatic downloads of regularly updated Virus Database
• Standalone virus scanner and right-click menu integration to Microsoft Windows Explorer
• Addin to Microsoft Outlook to remove virus-infected attachments automatically

In order to benefit the most from ClamWin features it's recommended that you scan your USB flash drives, your computers, netbooks and portable drives for viruses on a regular basis.

You should assume that any unknown computer that you use in an unknown or untrusted environment could be infected with a virus. Therefore you should scan your USB flash drive for viruses after having used an untrusted computer, and when you first plug your portable drive into another computer.

This way the virus will not be able to spread, as you'll detect the virus and quarantine it immediately and before you run your applications from the USB flash drives. The new computer will not be infected, and your USB flash drives stays free of virus and malware!

Remember to always wait until the drive access light has stopped blinking and then click the icon in your system tray to 'Safely Remove' your device. Never pull out a USB flash drive from a machine without "Safely Removing" first. This could damage the USB flash drive and you could loose your data!

Speaking of which - do you know the first rule of computer security?

It says this: back up your data on a regular basis!

For better redundancy you should make sure that you have several backups of the same files safely stored in several locations. Also, you should always make sure to encrypt your backups e.g with thepowerful encryption software such as TrueCrypt which is also suitable for usage on USB flash drives.

Once you start to follow these basic rules, you'll be able to enjoy running your applications from a USB flash drive without getting stuck with viruses or losing your data.

Note that we furbish your wholesale volumes of USB flash drives preloaded with ClamWin or any other GPL licensed open source software again a small service charge for the data preloading.

Ask your MemoTrek account manager for more information!

Those who really are concerned about privacy should certainly consider to run a Linux distribution with a strong security focus from their USB flash drives, such as a modified Damn Small Linux or Pendrive Linux, or even better a special and hardened Debian version that boots directly from your USB flash drive.

Stay tuned here at MemoTrek and we'll bring you more news on how to achieve a good level of security using such a USB flash drive with a pre-loaded Linux operating system!