USB flash pens (AKA USB flash drives) are a form of removable data storage. This means that you can write and store data (documents, music, video, pictures and other files) on them using your computer, then remove them and read that data in another computer. This makes them perfect for transferring data without too much hassle!

And they’re affordable as well- typical pen drives cost between £3 and £20, and they can be used countless times! You’ll almost certainly upgrade to a newer model before they wear out.

How much data can a pen drive store?

Flash memory USB pen drives are available in a wide range of capacities; as of mid-2009, the most common types are 2, 4, 8 or 16GB, although much smaller and larger ones are also available.

However, capacities are going up fast. You can now buy an 8GB (8000MB) model cheaper than a 512MB one cost three or four years ago. Fortunately, they’re cheap enough that this isn’t really a problem!

Size

Pen drives don’t take up much space. A typical model is around the size of a pack of chewing gum, if not smaller, and simply plugs into a USB socket. Some are even thinner- less than twice the thickness of a stick of chewing gum- and can be stored in your wallet or purse.

Because the chips and electronics themselves are very small, manufacturers could easily make all pen drives this size. However, the thinner and smaller drives are sometimes less convenient to handle and plug in. It’s a matter of choice; you have to balance your need for portability over ease of use.

How do I use a USB pen drive?

On most versions of Windows and other modern OSs, you simply plug the pen drive in and it’ll automatically appear as a removable drive in the “My Computer” or “Computer” windows (or similar). You can then copy files to and from it.

One important thing; if you’re using Windows, before you pull out the drive, remember to click on the green “drive arrow” icon in your tool tray (beside the date in the bottom-right of your screen), then click on the pop-up menu to remove your drive.

Now you can pull the drive from its socket!

(The reason is that sometimes your computer delays writing for performance reasons. If you remove the drive before the data is written, that particular data can be lost.)

Compatibility

All “modern” versions of Windows support pen drives with no additional work required. Simply plug in and let them be recognised; if necessary, Windows will auto-install the drivers.

• Windows XP, Vista, 2000, ME and Windows 7: All these support pen drives “out of the box” with no additional work needed.
• Windows 98 SE (98 Second Edition): Supported, but you have to download and install the drivers first.
• Windows 98 (original release) and Windows 95: Not recommended. The first edition of Windows 98 and later versions of Windows 95 had very flaky support for USB peripherals, full stop. On top of that you’d have to get the drivers for the pen drives themselves; a lot of hassle. (Older versions of Windows 95 didn’t support USB at all; the same applies to Windows NT 4).

Pen drives are also supported out of the box by Apple Mac OS-X, and by almost all recent mainstream Linux distributions. Simple!

How do they work?

Put simply, a pen drive is essentially flash memory (a kind of computer memory that holds data even when the power is off) with a controller chip and other components, a USB connector and some sort of case. That’s it- clever, isn’t it?

Did You Know?

An 8GB model can hold 64 billion bits- that’s almost 10 bits for every human being on the face of the planet; all 6.8 billion of them!