The notion of pendrive , or pen drive , refers to a flash type memory that connects to another device through a USB port . It is a small device that allows you to store digital data .
It should be noted that the idea of USB , acronym for Universal Serial Bus , refers to a bus : a common conductor to different devices that enables the distribution of information. The pendrive, in this framework, is a secondary memory (also called peripheral memory or external memory ) that can be connected directly through the USB type plug that is part of its own design.
The pendrive was born in the mid- 1990s to replace the floppy disk , until then the most popular medium for storing data. As its storage capacity and transfer speed increased, the pendrive increased in popularity and also competed against resources that replaced the floppy disk (such as the CD-ROM and DVD-ROM ).
It is important to keep in mind, however, that the mentioned elements use different technologies . In the case of the pendrive, it is a solid state drive that uses non-volatile memory (it does not demand energy to preserve the stored data).
Compared to CD or DVD, the pendrive is more resistant to dust and scratches. It is also smaller, which makes it easier to transport information . As a downside, it is susceptible to voltage changes while connected.
Another advantage of the pendrive over its alternatives is the ease with which it can be plugged in and start using. Since it does not have or require mechanical parts for its operation, the procedure is much more direct than opening the optical drive reader tray (CD, DVD or Blu-ray), placing the disc carefully and then closing the tray so that the motor makes it rotate and thus begins the reading process.
This difference also has an impact on the reading speed : we can say that the most modern pendrive models exceed the reading speeds of the fastest DVDs by more than twenty times. The pendrive is organized into blocks of flash memory that are read and written by means of electrical impulses, a much faster and safer process than the operation of optical discs, which requires constant rotation to scan their surface in search of data. or the spaces available for recording.
In any case, theory indicates that a pen drive can be written about a million times and store the data for two decades. That is why today they are very popular for storing and moving office documents, photographs, music and other files.
Maintaining a pendrive is easy: just store it in a clean and dry place, like any other electronic device, and avoid dropping or hitting it. On the other hand, there is always the risk of losing information, no matter how prestigious the brand is and no matter how much money the product costs; For this reason, it is recommended to have at least two copies of each important document.
While at the beginning of 2000 the pendrive competed with optical disks, today all of them and any other storage medium, such as the memory card (in all its sizes and variants), have a common enemy: the cloud. In its beginnings, cloud storage was something difficult to understand for some, with little future for others; Today, however, it is probably a service that almost all of us use for different purposes, such as data protection, remote storage, and the installation of applications for execution on more powerful devices than local ones.