Talk:USB flash drive

Cooking with propane ambiguous

"Channel Five's Gadget Show cooked a flash drive with propane,"

What does that mean? Propane boils at -42°C at 1 atm.

Or did they use a propane flame to cook the drive with boiling water at 100°C? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dbfirs (talk • contribs)

Pro-Microsoft Section

I feel the "Windows Vista and Windows 7 ReadyBoost" is very biased, and only promotes Microsoft Windows instead of informing others about Flash Drives. It is also incomplete as it says "In Windows Vista and Windows 7, the ReadyBoost feature allows use of flash drives (up to 4 GB in the case of Windows Vista) to augment operating system memory"; this is true, but it is only used during boot up.

The whole concept of using a drive as RAM has started with the many of the UNIX based OS as "swap" partitions on Flash drives, and with many versions of windows, the user can change the page file location to a flash drive.

I think that this section should be renamed from "Windows Vista and Windows 7 ReadyBoost" to "As a Supplement to Random Access Memory". The content should be something like the following:

"Flash Drives can be used as Swap/Paging space to supplement RAM in many operating systems. With many Unix-Like Operating systems such as OS X or Linux flash drives can have swap partitions, and in many versions of Microsoft Windows, a page file can be created on the flash drives. Windows Vista and Windows 7 has a feature called ReadyBoost, that allows system files to be cached on a flash drives (up to 4 GB in the case of Windows Vista) to speed up boot time."aminy23 (talk) 02:42, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I will not edit this for a few days, but I will wait for some feedback. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aminy23 (talk • contribs) 00:47, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

You are confusing multiple issues. ReadyBoost is not a page file. ReadyBoost is not SuperFetch. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

The article claims that ReadyBoost "augments RAM". I never mentioned Super Fetch. ReadyBoost is pretty much a Cache, and it does not work too differently than Unix Swap, or Windows Paging, as files are copied from the drive to the RAM to increase performance.aminy23 (talk) 02:42, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

USB hard disk redirection

Usb hard disk redirects here. It would be an independent article (and very important, because one uses a lot of USB hard disk). .--Diamondland (talk) 10:14, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree that's a bad redirect, thanks for fixing it to point to External hard disk drive. the wub "?!" 11:21, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Someone never actually changed the redirect, so I did it today. § Music Sorter § (talk) 04:46, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Initial Invention

The article states that "Phison Electronics Corporation claims to have produced the earliest "USB flash removable disk" dubbed the "Pen Drive" in May 2001.", but this seems highly irrelevant, as the article already stated that "IBM's USB flash drive became available on December 15, 2000".

It seems to me that it is pointless to have mention of the fact that Phison claims to have created the USB flash drive when the article previously said that two different companies (Trek Technology and IBM) were selling them BEFORE the date that Phison claims to have created them. Charwinger21 (talk) 18:04, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

If no one has any problems with this I'll go ahead and change it Charwinger21 (talk) 00:57, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Seems like a reasonable change unless someone can find a different source than Phison and a date that is before the other sources already listed the product existed in 2000. § Music Sorter § (talk) 10:14, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm making the change now. Charwinger21 (talk) 22:14, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Dubious disadvantage

"A drawback to the small size is that they are easily misplaced, left behind, or otherwise lost."

I think it's a little odd to characterise their small size as a disadvantage. Human falability is a disadvantage - not the USB drive! Adam1516 (talk) 11:00, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I actually think the other disadvantage is a bit dubious as well. USB flash drives can only be written and erased a number of times before becoming unusable? True, but the citation given says that, under a test, the number of rewrites before death was 9.5 million. Is that realistically going to be a problem for anyone? Limited to only 9.5 million rewrites? I guess that it would be a disadvantage for someone so have left it in. The same goes for the small size too. Someone will find it a disadvantage, so it's legitimate to have it up. Wikiditm (talk) 08:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Freeing-up space.

Would this be appropriate information here? Many Mac users are looking for info on how to free up space on their USB flash drives. (Empty the trash.) Perhaps also, various ways to get space without emptying the trash. Zipzip50 (talk) 03:24, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

No. The article is not for technical tips and troubleshooting - SimonLyall (talk) 10:30, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

"USB" as a common name

I have worked at several high schools in Victoria, Australia, in the past few years, and have noticed that in that environment the almost universal common name for these devices is simply "USB". Is such usage common elsewhere? I would love to be able to look it up, and be able to formally confirm my original research, but the term USB is just too common to do any meaningful search. (Unless anyone else has a great idea.) I note that the common names currently listed in the Naming section are not sourced either, but I have no problem with accepting that they are real. Should I /can I add "USB" to the list? HiLo48 (talk) 05:45, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Please don't add alternative names. There are many many names for the devices with some of them popular in different regions, languages or groups. If you add another one then somebody else will want theirs added as well so there is a policy on the page to NOT add alternative names. See the previous discussion on this talk page - SimonLyall (talk) 09:15, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

I can see the logic in that request. I'll just repeat my point that the existing common names in the article aren't sourced at all. What are they doing there? Where are they "common"? That would be encyclopaedic information. HiLo48 (talk) 11:22, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay, others removed. - SimonLyall (talk) 11:30, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

But now we have a bigger problem. Those folks I know who use one particular common name, and all those who use the names you have just removed, won't be able to find this article. Maybe we need a disambiguation page with every common name we can think of. HiLo48 (talk) 11:33, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Hence the 85 pages that redirect here - SimonLyall (talk) 11:52, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I still don't know what to do about the people I first spoke of here who simply use the name "USB". That's obviously going to take them to another article. HiLo48 (talk) 11:57, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

How can we make this list user friendly to view the many names for USB Flash Drive? I don't think the link we have here is very user friendly. Do we have to create some kind of List of alternate names for USB Flash Drive? § Music Sorter § (talk) 04:48, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

We tried that a few years ago but it didn't work very well. We need each name to be referenced so it's a reasonable amount of work (especially since many are informal terms). I think another argument was that wikipedia isn't really a dictionary or thesaurus - SimonLyall (talk) 05:07, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it's not, but the people I mentioned at the start of this thread aren't going to find what they want if they ever try to look up USB in Wikipedia. A puzzle for us. HiLo48 (talk) 05:12, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Well if they look up USB and actually read the article or look through the pictures they will find a link here.... Plugwash (talk) 06:51, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

File system

The File system section of this article refers to FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 file systems being used on flash drives. This article links to

Main article: Flash file system

and that article refers to a set of file systems with completely different names. Are these 2 sets of file systems alternatives to each other, or are they at different levels? Could someone put in an explanation please? FrankSier (talk) 13:44, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Investigating further, I have found that the article Flash memory#Flash_file_systems says: "In practice, flash file systems are only used for memory technology devices (MTDs), which are embedded flash memories that do not have a controller. Removable flash memory cards and USB flash drives have built-in controllers to perform wear leveling and error correction so use of a specific flash file system does not add any benefit.^{[citation needed]}". This implies to me that the FFS type of file system, is an alternative, to the FAT type, not a different level. Also stated is that USB flash drives, which are the topic of this article, do not use the type of file system covered in the linked article. It seems to me therefore that the link from this article to Flash file system is either not useful, or could do with further explanation. I do not have the knowledge to make the changes myself, especially as the above quote includes a 'Citation needed' tag. FrankSier (talk) 14:18, 18 February 2012 (UTC)