What is a flash, thumb, jump drive or memory stick?
A flash, jump, thumb, pen, keychain drive and even memory stick are all words to describe the same thing: a USB drive that is a plug-and-play, portable storage device about the size of a thumb. The device will work for both Mac and PC’s, and does not require batteries or an external power supply. When the device is plugged into a USB port, the computer automatically recognizes it as a removable drive and assigns it a drive letter, such as E:. Files can be saved, copied, moved or deleted from it just as you would a floppy disk or hard drive. However, it is not recommended as a backup device – users are encouraged to backup their files to a CD-RW or CD-R disk or zip disk. The USB drive can store virtually any digital data media, and range in capacity from 8 MB to 2 Gigabytes. Be sure to buy one that corresponds to your present and future storage needs; for example, an art or architectural graphics student will need a lot more storage capacity than a word processing student, because graph
