Globalization is the biggest achievement of human beings in this era and for upcoming generations. It has changed the entire perception of every individual relating to human needs and civilizations. A Chinese citizen asking for a Coke, an African enjoying his lunch at McDonald’s and an American child playing Japanese video games are all examples of globalization. Thus, no organization wants to contract its limit over the boundaries of its nation, going global has become the limit.

We all know globalization is only possible with a strong IT backbone. Therefore, information should be transferred within seconds, able to be shared simultaneously around the globe, should be portable and easily accessible. Hence, to meet this stance in IT, storage devices with lightning fast data transferring have been introduced.

USB Flash Drives:

A USB flash drive which is also known as a flash drive, flash stick or thumb drive was commercially introduced by trek technology and IBM in 2000. These USB drives are composed of NAND flash memory data storage wafers in devices that are typically of low cost and are easily removable/rewriteable and weigh less than an ounce, all that with a USB (universal serial bus) interface.

USB flash drives are the new age replacements of older storage devices like: floppy disks, CD’s and Zip drives which were extremely small, slow to transfer data and had low storage capacity as compared to flash drives. A survey made on thumb drives and its uses around the world showed that approximately 88.22 million USB drives were shipped around the globe in the year 2005, in 2006 this increased to 115.7 million. Similarly, Gartner Dataquest statistics shows that on average there is a 100% rise in the number of USB drives users purchased worldwide.

The Merits of USB Flash Drives:

•USB drives are very economical as they are very cheap and easily accessible.

•USB drives have zero possibility of dust and scratches of the saved data as these devices have zero moving parts.

•The data storing capability is enormously as compared to CD/DVD’s, floppy disk and other storage devices.

•They are extremely handy and lightweight so they are a good portable device.

•As compared to hard drives these USB drives use very little power for storing and removing data.

•Booting up a computer is possible with flash drives.

The Demerits of USB Flash Drives:

•Every flash drives depending upon its memory and function has limited cycles of data writes and removes. Thus, they cannot be made a primary storage device as they will render useless over time.

•Although these drives are very handy, the risk of virus attack and data failure is a major problem seen in flash drives.

•USB drives are made fragile, they are lightweight. Thus, the possibility of external damages and getting crushed is unquestionable.

•Being small in size the risk of misplacing, theft or lost is likely.

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