Here’s a list of Flash Drive Questions or “FAQ”. There are many organizations that make a claim for who invented the USB flash drive first. Being a combination of the Universal Serial Bus interface and the flash storage memory architecture, it is tricky to say who put the two successful and future ready technologies together. That is part of the confusion! Being labeled both “universal” and a very generic “drive”, the USB flash drive has a lot of variables it works with. These are some of the top Flash Drive Questions we’ve heard regarding the popular flash drive.
A flash drive has many names. It has also been called a “pen drive”, “thumb stick”, “jump drive”, or even just “USB”. All of these names are acceptable. However, “USB Flash Drive” is the most accurate. Simply, a flash drive is a solid state flash memory chip with a USB interface for quick access and storage of all sorts of files. A flash drive is a great tool.
Usually, a flash drive has a USB-A port as the connection point. To use a flash drive, use the USB-A plug on the USB-A port on your computer or laptop.
Because a flash drive is a very blank slate, there are tons of uses for it. Some common uses are storing computer files, transferring office data to your co-workers, custom branding drives to hand out files to clients, data backups, mobile computers, and more. Because the flash drive is designed to be so universal, it has a seemingly limitless application.
A flash drive’s cost varies by speed, storage, brand, and material. Usually, a larger storage size and faster speeds will bring the cost of the drive up. The brand of the drive will also have slight control over the cost. Finally, the material used to make the product will add value to the flash drive. In 2022, a 64GB USB flash drive averages around $7.52 across the 3 brands we carry.
The EBS flash drive shop page. We sell a wide selection of storage sizes, speeds, and models from 3 major brands, including SanDisk. We also offer bulk discounts starting at 10 units.
That is a question that holds a lot of variables. Usually, if your flash drive has the correct connections to your computer’s ports, it should work. Besides physical connection, your product can be formatted in 3 main ways. For most uses, formatting your flash drive exFAT will give you the most compatibility with the least feature loss.
Formatting your flash drive is easy, your computer has all that you need. First, start by plugging in your flash drive into your computer. Then, open the application that manages your drive. Finally, run through the steps to finish the process. If you need more help, we have made a blog post with this information in it as well.
This is another question with lots of nuance. There is a blog specifically about this topic. To get a general idea of how many pictures your flash drive can hold, divide the storage size measured in MB by the size of the average photo in MB.
The short answer is, yes! Most flash drives are backwards compatible. In most cases, you should be able to use your drive with any matching port. What’s the difference between USB 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2?
No, this is like putting a round peg in a square hole. Rather, a rectanglular peg in a oval hole. Unfortunately, it may fit, but it will not work. Because you need to make the correct pin connections, using a USB-A with a USB-C will not function. What’s the difference between USB-A and USB-C?
I'm using an IDS uEye industrial camera like this one. It basically records 1280 x 1024 at 23 fps (4 channels of 8 bits). As a result of some possible usb power/bandwidth problems, I was trying to calculate the required camera's bandwith. so I did this:
1280 * 1024 * 23 * 4 * 8 / (8 * 10^6) = ~120 MiB/s = ~115 MB/s
I confirmed this by checking a captured bmp image's size: around 5 MB, so at 23 fps it gives us 5*23 = 115 MB/s. To clarify, I'm not recording a video stream, but separate frames.
Then I realized this is an USB 2.0 camera, so there is a limit of 60 MB/s. Even the camera documentation says:
"Theoretically, up to 50 MByte/s of data can be transmitted in this mode, but in practice, this value is hardly ever reached. A high-performance desktop PC can transmit about 40 MByte/s, most notebooks or embedded PC systems even less than that."
So I started to think there's something I'm missing. I used usbtop to monitor the USB bandwith, and I got a value of ~4 MiB/s. So, how is it possible that the camera is capturing 115 MB of images per second while running on a USB 2.0 bus and consuming only 4 MB/s? Is it some kind of compression?