What is a thumb drive and what is it used for?

This question was answered on February 7, 2003. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting. The term ‘thumb drive’ refers to a new generation of small storage devices that is about the size of your thumb and plugs into a USB (Universal Serial Bus) port on your computer. They are also commonly referred to as ‘USB flash drives’. They use a technology called ‘flash memory’ (same as is used in most of today’s digital cameras) which is basically an electrically erasable programmable read-only memory module (EEPROM) that can be used as a reusable portable storage device. The size of the drive will determine how much information can be stored. They range from 8Mb (5.5 floppy disks worth of data) to 1Gb (almost 700 floppy disks worth) and can store any type of computer file. The most common sizes are 64Mb ($30-$50) and 128Mb ($50-$100) and are available from a wide variety of companies from Trek (thumbdrive.com) to Sony (sonystyle.com). If you need to transport ...  more