Introduction
Pen Drive is a storage drive that is used to transfer files. It is also commonly called USB flash drive. It is a portable device which means that it can be easily transferred from one location to another. Its design is very compact and it appears in pen shape hence it is also called pen drive.
These pen drives are used in many places all over the world. With this, it has easily replaced many storage devices such as CD's, Floppy Disk because it is more than them in both data storing capacity and transferring speed. Pen drives or USB flash drives are connected to the computer through the USB (Universal Serial Bus) port which are available on computer motherboards. These devices do not require external power supply as they take power directly from the USB port to operate.
Being micro, lightweight and handy, it can be easily carried from one place to another by any students, professionals, academicians and independent tech consultants. Pen drives are mainly used to store and transfer data. Through this, audio, video, and other data files can be easily transferred from one computer to another. As long as the desktop and laptop have a USB port and are compatible with the pen drive operating system, the pen drive will continue to be used.
Before the use of Pen Drive, Floppy disks, CDs and DVDs were used. These storage devices used to be big and the storage space was also very less in it. To overcome these problems, USB Pen Drive was developed. Talking about the present time, at present there is no fast portable storage medium for data recording and reading. Due to its many specialties, it became more popular very soon.
It is believed that it got its name "Pen Drive" because it looked like a pencil. Its storage capacity currently ranges from 1 Gb to 128 Gb, and it is available in many shapes and sizes.
Characteristics of Pen Drive
Here I am going to tell you about the different features of Pen Drive.
1. It is made of many materials such as plastic, metal etc., which makes it light.
2. Its length is of many types, from 1 cm to 6 cm.
3. Its capacity ranges from 512 Mb to 128 Gb.
4. It gets power from USB port.
5. It is very portable so that it can be used anywhere anytime.
6. Its thickness varies from 1 cm to 3 cm.
7. Its width varies from 1 cm to 3 cm.
how to use pen drive
Using pen drive is very simple. Here the user has to insert one end of the drive into the USB port of the computer. It gets activated as soon as you insert it. When the Pen Drive is activated, some notification shows on the screen of the computer. This means that your drive is now connected with the system. Once the drive is activated, then you can drag and drop or copy and paste the files into memory. This process is very easy which anyone can do.
Nowadays there are many different computer operating systems in the market, so Pen Drive manufacturers manufacture these pen drives in such a way that they can work in all operating systems. Therefore, it is wise that before buying any portable storage device, read its packaging carefully so that it works properly on their computer system.
how pen drive works
Technicians classify these pen drives as NOT AND, or NAND, they are also called gate-style data storage devices. In this technology the data is done according to the store blocks and not randomly. It does not store data like a computer's main memory systems—as in read-only memory (ROM) and random-access memory (RAM). In comparison to storing the data randomly, by storing it block wise, more information can be stored and that too at very low prices.
Structure and Working of Pen Drive
Pen drives have a small printed circuit board (PCB). This circuit board provides a solid base to the structure of the Pen Drive and acts as a medium to collect information. A small “microchip” resides in this circuit board, which helps in extracting data to the pen drive. All this process requires low electric power to operate if we compare CD-R and floppy disk then. Think technically then it is based on EEPROM which allows writing and erasure process simultaneously in computer system.
Actually pen drive also needs a software program with the help of which it can connect with computer and can do many operations like data read, data transmission and data copying. For example, when you connect an iPhone to a computer, we need iTunes software to copy any music or video files. Here we get to know that program or software like iTunes gives us an interface.
