What do many buyers pay attention to when they want to buy a flash drive? Some take into account the modern and at the same time unusual design of the information carrier. Others, wanting to save money, try to find a large amount of memory at a lower price, while losing speed characteristics. And only a few understand that the most important thing is not the size of the flash drive or its design, but the technical characteristics that are necessary for fast data transfer.
Thanks to this article, you can learn more about flash drives: what is a file system, what cluster size should you choose when formatting a flash drive, how you can determine its speed capabilities and true volume. Also, thanks to the knowledge gained, you will learn how to choose the right flash drive, paying attention to what some overlook.
In addition to all of the above, from this you will learn how to independently check the speed capabilities of your flash drive. Unfortunately, manufacturers do not display such data on the flash drive or on the box, so sometimes you have to find out for yourself.
A few words about flash drives
One of the first flash drives was created in 2000 by the Israeli company M-Systems. A year earlier, in April, a patent for a flash drive was signed, and a year later its first copy was submitted. The flash drive was given the name DiskOnKey, and it was sold under the logo of the American company IBM.
In the same year, Trek Technology provided a copy of the first flash drive, only under a different name - ThumbDrive, which had its own size of 8 MB. Trek Technology was able to take pride of place in the global market, but lost a lot of lawsuits that were filed by companies in other countries.
Manufacturers
On the Internet, you can find many different manufacturers of storage media, and each of them has its own fans. More popular brands are Adata and Kingston. They have earned their trust through quality and speedy products. In addition, Adata and Kingston take care of their fans. How?
For example, Adata is constantly updating information regarding the technical capabilities of high-speed flash drives. Thanks to this, every day you can watch the latest innovations that appear on the Internet.
As for Kingston, it also takes care that everyone can check the speed of copying and reading any flash card that he purchased. At the moment, this information is in PDF format in the public domain, so any user can use it.
Besides Adata and Kingston, there are other manufacturers who are also trustworthy. These include Power, Transcend, Sandisk, Apacer and others. Sure, each of them has its own advantages, but you should not choose a device based solely on the brand. Every company that manufactures USB flash drives also has poor products or, to put it mildly, less quality ones. Therefore, always initially pay attention to the technical specifications and only then to a beautiful design.
Flash drive size
Often, information about the volume of the flash drive can be found either on the case itself or on the packaging. But what size flash drive to choose? Now many have the opinion that the more, the better. However, this information is erroneous. Why? The first reason is a waste of money. You buy a flash drive, for example, 64 GB (Gigabytes), and you will use less than half. Therefore, decide in advance what maximum flash drive size you need.
The second reason is power loss. If you are chasing a large volume and at the same time low cost, then keep in mind that the speed of copying information can be very low. Even if you use the entire volume of the flash drive, then in order to upload large files, you will spend a lot of time. It is better then to buy an external hard drive, which will please you with a large volume (1 Terabyte) and a relatively low price.
But if you need a flash drive, then pay attention that they come in the following categories:
- 4-16 GB - small, cheap.
- 16-64 GB - high-quality and at the best price.
- from 128 GB - for urgent need and at a high price.
As already mentioned, the size of the flash drive must correspond to the specific task. Do not chase large volumes, as you will lose a lot of money and purchase low-quality goods.
Speed features
As a rule, manufacturers indicate on the case or packaging only the amount of internal memory. Additional information must be checked independently. But, fortunately, there are several bona fide manufacturers who still indicate the technical parameters.
If you have already bought a USB flash drive and it does not indicate the speed of reading and copying information, then you can verify this yourself using special software, which stores the test results of the latest models of different brands.
Useful little things
In order to promote their products and reach the next level in the world market, many manufacturers of flash drives install additional functions on their devices. Thanks to this marketing move, many little-known brands were able to not only successfully promote their inventions, but also gain a lot of fans. What are these additional features?
One of the most popular new products is biometrics, in other words, equipping a fingerprint scanner. Such a function is necessary only if you are working with very important documents that require additional protection. A flash drive with such a scanner will cost much more than conventional drives.
Another equally useful option is data compression. This feature increases the density of data storage so as not to occupy free space. But do not think that all these additional software do not affect the performance of the flash drive.
Flash drive case
Another factor that you need to pay attention to when choosing a flash drive is the case. What is it for? As a rule, many flash drives become unusable due to external damage. Why it happens? To better understand this, let's look in detail what types of cases are:
- Open connector. This type of enclosure is more vulnerable to physical damage, since contact plates do not protect anything. Usually such flash drives are very cheap and can quickly fail.
- Removable cap. Perhaps this is one of the popular connector types. Caps can be both plastic and rubber. The use of rubber will provide better protection against moisture and dust, and plastic will better cope with physical damage.
- Bracket. This design is mounted on the housing itself and can be rotated in different directions, thereby closing the contact plates. It has a rather weak level of protection against external factors and often breaks due to poor fixation.
As you probably noticed, the best type of case is a removable cap. This design can be made of plastic, rubber or metal. Which one to give preference to, everyone decides for himself.
Variety of clusters
Probably every time I came across a formatting process for flash drives. And this process does not cause difficulties, because it is fully automated. But before starting it, the system allows the user to make a choice in the size of the cluster.
Clusters are a kind of boxes in which the necessary information is stored. When formatting flash drives, the cluster size depends on the selected file system. Each system has its own maximum and minimum size. For example, the cluster size when formatting a flash drive in fat32 can be from 1024 to 32 Kb.
What to consider when choosing a cluster
First of all, the cluster size depends on the size of the files that you will copy to the USB flash drive. If they are insignificant in volume (text documents, pictures, etc.), then you can distribute cells of 16 KB or less. Accordingly, if you need to transfer large files (movies, games, music, etc.) to a flash drive, then it is better to choose the maximum cluster size.
Why is it necessary to constantly choose a cluster? The speed of copying information will depend on the correct size. When you select the cluster size, the file that will be placed in it will take up all the remaining space.
For example, you selected clusters of 16 Kb, and file sizes of 6 Kb. Each cluster can contain only one file, and therefore, when copying information, free space (in this case, 10 KB) is not filled with another file, but remains empty. For this reason, the copy speed will be much slower than if you select clusters of the appropriate size.
Selection tips
What do you think now, what is extremely important to pay attention to when buying flash drives? For value or design? Or maybe the speed of reading information, volume and type of case? Of course, the design of the flash drive and its cost are also important, but first it is better to look closely at the technical specifications, and only then choose a good design and the corresponding cost.
Also, if finances allow you, then you can look at useful software that can increase the actual size of a flash drive or provide more reliable protection. But do not forget that such functions can greatly affect the speed of its action.
Conclusion
Thanks to this article, you got acquainted with different types of flash drives, learned how to correctly determine the appropriate cluster, based on the size of the flash distribution unit, learned that such modern devices help us easily transfer large amounts of information in a small device.
Also, you may have realized what size flash drive you need, what clusters are and what the case is like (open connector, removable cap and bracket). Now you can safely go to the store and purchase a useful device.