The flash drive is a commonplace revolution
How to make use of an inexpensive and essential high-tech tool
The term revolution is often used to describe many new technological developments. There is also a tendency for high-tech revolutions to play out fairly quickly and disappear.
The VHS videotape was a revolution that made watching rented movies at home a reality, as well as producing videos of your vacation or a birthday party.
But the DVD made the VHS tape obsolete and online streaming made DVDs a novelty from the past. Do you remember iPods and BlackBerry phones?
Yet, there is one tech revolution that has survived and become a useful, commonplace, device. It’s the USB flash drive, also known as a thumb drive or key drive in reference to its size.
Flash drives replaced 3.5-inch diskettes which were expensive and held about 1.4 million bytes of data each.
A common 32 gigabyte flash drive now costs less than $20, fits in the change pocket of a pair of jeans, and has the storage capacity of more than 23,000 diskettes.
A flash drive is the obvious choice for backing up data from a computer or moving it to another device. You essentially plug the flash drive into a USB port on a computer, open File Explorer by using the Windows key plus E, select files, and copy and paste them to a flash drive.
The Wikihow site has instructions for both Windows and Mac computers (tinyurl.com/dttyf3fd).
But the diminutive flash drive has many other uses. All smart TVs have USB ports and, if you plug a flash drive loaded with photos into your TV, you can view the photos as a slide show.
Each TV brand has a different way of doing this so consult your smart TV’s manual.
CD players in cars are obsolete, but most cars now have a USB port and a flash drive will function as a tiny CD replacement that can hold the same amount of music as dozens of CDs.
When a flash drive is inserted into the car’s USB port, song titles will usually be displayed on the car’s audio display.
Transferring music from a CD to a computer and converting the music to highly compressed MP3 files is called “ripping” and can be done using a computer’s DVD player and Windows Media Player. When a retail CD is inserted into the computer’s DVD/CD drive, Media Player should automatically download the album info and song titles from the internet. Unfortunately, if you rip an old CD that you created, you’ll have to insert the song titles manually.
A few years ago, I made a YouTube video (youtu.be/0tmyq2cWNKA) illustrating how to rip a CD and transfer the files to a flash drive for use in a car.
Windows 11 includes the old Media Player Legacy version which you access by clicking on Start, All Apps, and then Windows Tools. PC Mag has a good guide to ripping CDs in Win 11 (tinyurl.com/ vbh89wy4).
A flash drive will also let you travel from home to work, school, or a resort, and run your favourite programs on another computer without having to install anything. This is also secure because any info, passwords, files, or bookmarks on the flash drive will not be retained on the host computer when the app is closed, and the key drive removed.
PortableApps (portableapps. com/ apps) has about 500 free apps for download.
There are the Chrome and Firefox browsers, graphics and photo editing tools such as Irfanview, the music editing tool Audacity, the LibreOffice suite, over 60 games, and McAfee Stinger and Spybot will scan a computer for malware and spyware without having to be installed on the computer.
The beauty of a portable app is that you can try it out without installing anything and if you don’t like it, simply delete it.
The free PortableApps Platform will organize your portable apps, keep a file of passwords and bookmarks, and let you store your portable apps in the cloud at Google Drive or OneDrive for easy access.
From a diminutive miracle, the flash drive has become an inexpensive, commonplace, and essential tool.