Pen Drive Full Form

What is the full form of Pen Drive?

There are not any specific full form of Pen Dive as it is itself a complete name. A Pen Drive, or a USB flash drive, often known as a thumb drive, is a type of portable data storage device that combines flash memory with a USB interface. It is often much smaller than an optical disc, rewritable, and detachable. The majority are under 30g in weight (1 oz). As with practically all other computer memory devices, storage capacities have increased and costs have decreased since these products initially hit the market in late 2000.

This Story also Contains

1. What is the full form of Pen Drive?
2. History of pen drive
3. Technological advancements
4. More about flash memory
5. Size and packaging design
6. Longevity

As of March 2016, 8 to 256 GB flash drives were the most common, while 512 GB and 1 TB models were less popular. The biggest flash drives on the market as of 2018 has a 2 TB storage capacity.Depending on the specific type of memory chip used, some allow up to 100,000 write/erase cycles and are believed to physically last between 10 and 100 years under typical conditions (shelf storage time).

USB flash drives are frequently used for file storage, additional backups, and file transmission between computers. They are smaller, faster, have a lot more capacity, and are more durable because there aren't any moving parts like there are with CDs or floppy discs. They are also unaffected by surface scratches and less susceptible to electromagnetic interference than floppy discs (unlike CDs). However, as with any flash storage, it may not be ideal for long-term retention of data due to bit leakage caused by lengthy power outages and the potential for spontaneous controller failure due to subpar manufacturing. The firmware of the controller, internal data redundancy, and error correction algorithms all have an impact on how long data can be stored.

History of pen drive

• Flash memory, a kind of floating-gate semiconductor memory created by Fujio Masuoka in the early 1980s, serves as the foundation for USB flash drives. Transistors with floating gates are used as memory cells in flash memory.

• The USB flash drive is said to have been created by a number of people.

• Amir Ban, Dov Moran, and Oron Ogdan of the Israeli business M-Systems submitted a patent application titled "Architecture for a Universal Serial Bus-Based PC Flash Disk" on April 5, 1999. Subsequently, They were granted the patent on November 14, 2000. These people are frequently credited as the creators of the USB flash drive because.

• Additionally in 1999, IBM engineer Shimon Shmueli submitted an invention disclosure claiming to be the creator of the USB flash drive.

• The first company known to have sold a USB flash drive is a Singaporean business called Trek 2000 International, which also claims to be the device's original creator.

• Lastly, Pua Khein-Seng, a Malaysian engineer, has also been suggested by some as the device's potential creator.

• The USB flash drive has been the subject of several patent challenges over the years due to conflicting inventorship claims. Both Trek 2000 International and Netac Technology claim that other companies are violating their USB flash drive patents. Nevertheless, despite these legal actions, there are still a number of competing theories regarding who invented the USB flash drive first.

Technological advancements

• The speed at which flash drives transport data is frequently used to evaluate them. Transfer rates can be expressed in terms of megabytes per second (MB/s), megabits per second (Mbit/s), or optical drive multipliers like "180X" (180 times 150 KiB/s).

• Different devices have a wide range in file transmission rates. The potential transfer rate of the model, USB 1.1, which is restricted to 12 Mbit/s (1.5 MB/s) with considered overhead, can be theoretically achieved by second generation flash drives at up to 30 MB/s and nearly half that rate, respectively. The pattern of data access has a big impact on a device's effective transfer rate.

• By the year 2002, USB flash drives got new version with USB 2.0, which provides a maximum transfer rate of 480 Mbit/s. After accounting for protocol overhead, this corresponds to an effective throughput of 35 MB/s. Second generation USB was widely adopted the same year as Intel started including them in its laptops. The devices' maximum storage capacity rose to more than 128 GB by 2010.

• Laptops only recently began to support USB 3.0. Up until 2010, the majority of laptop models still have USB 2.0 ports only.

• A flash drive with 1 TB of storage was released in January 2013 by the tech company Kingston.

• In March 2015, the first USB 3.1 type-C flash drives with read/write rates of about 530 MB/s were unveiled.

• Flash drives with capacities between 8 and 256 GB are more frequently purchased as compared to those with capacities between 512 GB and 1 TB.

• A 2-TB flash drive was unveiled by Kingston Technology in 2017.

• The smallest USB-C flash drive of its kind, a 1TB model from SanDisk, was introduced in 2018.

More about flash memory

With cheaper costs, lower power requirements, and smaller sizes made possible by advancements in semiconductor device fabrication techniques, flash memory combines a variety of older technologies. The memory storage was built using EEPROM and EPROM technology from prior times. These had a small storage capacity, requiring complicated high-voltage drive circuitry, read and wrote slowly, and could only be re-written after wiping the chip clean of all data.

Later, hardware engineers created EEPROMs with an erasure region divided into tiny "fields" that could each be erased independently of the others. To change the data in a specific memory location, the entire field had to be copied into an off-chip buffer memory, erased, and then the data had to be modified as needed in the buffer before being rewritten into the same field. This necessitated a lot of computer assistance, and PC-based EEPROM flash memory systems frequently had separate microprocessor systems. A more or less miniature form of this are flash drives.

Size and packaging design

The majority of USB flash drives weigh under 30 g. (1 oz). Some manufacturers differentiate their products by using elaborate housings, which are frequently bulky and make the drive challenging to connect to the USB port, while others compete for the smallest size, with the biggest memory, offering drives only a few millimetres larger than the USB plug itself.

Plugging a flash drive into one USB port could block a nearby port due to how closely placed USB port connectors are on computer housings. Only if the gadget is marketed with a separate extension cord is it permitted to bear the USB logo. These cables do not adhere to the USB standard, yet they are USB-compatible.

In addition to being integrated into daily life usable items like watches, pens, laser pointers, and even Swiss Army knives, USB flash drives have also been given novelty cases like toy cars or Lego blocks. In Asia, it's fairly common to find USB flash drives with pictures of dragons, cats, or aliens. USB flash drives are a common accessory for case modding because of its compact size, durability, and low cost.

Longevity

Multi-level cell (MLC) based memory with a capacity of between 3,000 and 5,000 program-erase cycles is frequently used as the memory in flash devices. While some high-end flash drives have single-level cell (SLC) based memory with a capacity of about 30,000 writes, triple-level cell (TLC), which has up to 500 write cycles per physical sector, is also often utilised today. A well-used USB drive may be write-protected to prolong the life of individual cells since there is essentially no limit to the number of reads from such flash memory.

The estimation of flash memory endurance is a difficult task that depends on the SLC, MLC, or TLC memory type, chip size, and actual usage pattern. A USB flash drive can therefore live for a few days to several hundred years.

The USB connector hardware is only designed to last about 1,500 insert-removal cycles, regardless of how durable the memory is in and of itself.