| When personal computers first went mainstream | | | | data storage devices married with an integrated |
| back in the mid 1990's, the external storage medium | | | | universal serial bus (USB) 1.1 or 2.0 interface. These |
| of choice was the 3.5 inch floppy drive. Unfortunately | | | | devices are removable, rewritable and, as the name |
| floppy's were slow and bulky and their standard | | | | implies, about the same size as your thumb. Typically |
| storage of 1.44 megabytes was quickly outstripped | | | | they are protected by being either retractable or |
| by technological advancements. In recent years most | | | | having a plastic cap and are surrounded by a hard |
| computer manufacturers have ceased including floppy | | | | plastic enclosure. This protects them from damage |
| drives in their product lines altogether. While floppy's | | | | by careless users as well as from the natural |
| are still widely used in certain professions such as the | | | | elements. In fact there are many stories of thumb |
| music and theater industry for lighting consoles and | | | | drives forgotten in pockets and run through both |
| drum machines their use is rapidly declining. | | | | washer and dryer with no data loss, some several |
| Next came the compact disk or CD as a medium for | | | | times, all without any apparent ill effects. |
| mass external storage. CD-ROM's are still quite widely | | | | USB flash drives have increased in storage capacity |
| used for file back up and the burning of mp3 music | | | | at a remarkable rate, drives can now be found that |
| files. CD's however are vulnerable to scratches and | | | | contain 256 GB of storage space. This is the same |
| exposure to other elements, even more so than | | | | size as what was considered a rather roomy internal |
| floppy disks. They are also much bulkier than their | | | | hard drive just a few years ago. And the price per |
| predecessor although one CD-ROM can hold as much | | | | megabyte is expected to decrease as the |
| as 800 megabytes of information. A CD-ROM can | | | | technology matures. Some USB flash drives allow up |
| also be used to flash bios on a computer in the | | | | to one million rewrites and have a ten year data |
| absence of a floppy drive. | | | | retention expectancy. |
| USB flash drives are small, portable flash memory | | | | |