Is it possible to store 2GB to 4GB of data in a device half the size of your pen? If you asked this question a few years back the answer is NO. But now it is very much possible. These are called USB drives or THUMB drives.

Those drives like pen drive or thumb drive that can be inserted to your USB (Universal Serial Bus) port in your computer is an USB drive.

Floppy drives and hard drives are secured to your computer using screws. Therefore they are permanently fixed to your computer. To disconnect and install it in another computer is not an easy task. Moreover these drives need power cables and data cables separately to function. But an USB drive is entirely different.

It is very easy to use an USB drive. You just have to insert the USB drive into your computer's USB port. You need not open the computer's cabinet for this. There is not data cable or power cable in USB drives.

As soon as you insert the USB drive into your USB port you can start using it. You need not install any software to use this. Reason: The newer Operating Systems such as Windows XP and most of the linux distros know how to detect these USB drives automatically. Immediately the OS will mount the USB drive to your computer and assign a drive letter such as E: or F: and will be available in your usual file explorer such as windows explorer.

If your Operating System is old (such as Windows 98) then you may have to install the appropriate driver software for your USB drive. The driver comes in the CD together with the drive or you can download the driver from the manufacturer's website.

What is bootable USB drive?

Just like the bootable floppy disk or a bootable CD you can also boot the computer using a bootable USB drive. But your computer's BIOS should support this facility.

Buying tips for USB drive (Thumb drive, pen drive, jump drive etc)

1. Storage size of USB drive
   
   USB drives are also called as Pen drive, Thumb drive, Jump drive, Key chain drive etc. These drives come in various storage capacities. USB drives are available from 16MB to 4.4GB.
   
2. Speed of USB drives
   
   Currently the USB2.0 is the standard widely in use. The speed of USB 2.0 is 480 MBPS. You may think that USB 2.0 based USB drives will have this 480 Mbps speed. But in reality there are three types of speed in USB drives.
   
   They are Low speed, Full speed and High speed. Low speed refers to a mere 1.5 Mbps speed. Do not get misled by the 'Full speed' term. Full Speed USB drives have 12 Mbps speed. Only 'High speed' or 'hispeed' USB drives have 480Mbps speed. Remember to buy USB drives that are faster to read and write.
   
   So do not just see whether it is USB 2.0 but also see the speed.
   
3. Write Protected USB drives
   
   See if the USB drive has a write protect switch. Because if you do not want to accidentally delete the files or do not want to accidentally write to it then this switch will be useful.