Free Flash Drive

USB flash drives are incredibly popular at the moment and have pretty much replaced the CD and DVD as the preferred medium on which to store and carry personal data. Floppy disks, with the exception of the few die-hards that still use them, are all but extinct and there's a whole new generation that will have never seen or used a floppy disk.

USB flash drives are popular because they're relatively cheap, they're easy to use, they're small, they're portable and you can transfer data onto them quickly and without fuss or any technical knowledge. Because pretty much every PC and Mac has a USB port when you use a USB flash drive to store and carry data around with you, you know you're going to be able to access the data on pretty much any PC you use, whether the PC is at home, work or school.

Of course most people when they want a new USB flash drive they'll pick one up at the local store or order one from the myriad of on-line stores that sell them.  The only downside of doing this is that most of the stores carry the same style, brand and type of flash drive and most of them are the same rectangular shape – not exciting but they work and the core design around which most are built is a tried and tested shape.

Many crave the opportunity to be different, to push back on the bland uniformity of everyday product design but for many part from putting a "sticker" or two on the drives there's not much that can be done, or is there?

USB flash drives are pretty simple devices made up of 4 components; the core flash memory module, the flash memory controller chip (the brains of the unit); the PCB with integral USB connector and the "shell" that encases these parts and gives the flash drive its styling and look.

Today it's possible to buy a USB PCB with the flash memory module and controller chip already on-board. – This effectively give you a functional USB flash drive but without a body shell. But if you buy these then you can design and make your own shell and have a truly unique flash drive that is personal to you.

Some schools are catching on to this idea and buying USB PCB's and setting their students the task of designing and building a USB flash drive – it's a great idea and a fantastic way to get the students engaged in product design, manufacture and packaging – who knows, they might even come up with a design to challenge the big, established brands.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/hardware-articles/build-your-own-usb-flash-drive-4325919.html

Phil is part of the team at USB2U. Launched in 2002 USB2U has now establised iteself as one of the leading supplier of branded flash drives and custom USB memory sticks in the UK. USB2U offer a free design and mock up service couple with great prices and outstanding customer support. Contact us today for a quote. We'd love to hear from you.

If you're looking for something a little different, something that will make your brand stand out from the crowd and something that will deliver a bit of a "wow" factor then you might want to think about USB flash drives in the shape of a battery.

Of course these battery shaped flash drives are ideal for any battery manufacturer like Duracell or Energizer but they are also ideal for any company that has products powered by batteries or is looking to "power into new markets". There are lots of creative ways in which USB battery flash drives could be used and they certainly make a powerful impact!

The battery USB drives are slightly bigger than a standard AA battery (they need to be to accommodate the USB connector), they are made of metal and they have screw cap so they're a pretty rugged and tough flash drive. Although they have an interesting shape they work just like any standard USB flash drive and they're available in memory sizes from 64MB all the way up to 16GB!

Despite their shape four colour printing is available of these novel USB sticks and they can be supplied with a variety of different keyring attachments and/or lanyards.

If you do buy branded USB battery shaped memory sticks or in fact any USB stick that you're going to use for promotional purposes then you need to think about whether you're going to pre-load the sticks with data before you hand them out. Over the last year there has been a significant increase in the number of companies pre-loading their USB flash drives before they distribute them.

The print, transportation and storage costs of printed material like sales brochures, press releases and product sheets can all be saved by loading electronic versions of them onto the flash drives. In some cases it's relatively easy to build a business case to fund the purchase of the USB drives from these savings alone. If you build in the additional promotional value that they deliver its no surprise that more and more companies are now buying USB flash drives.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/hardware-articles/branded-usb-battery-flash-drives-4031574.html

Phil is part of the team at USB2U. Launched in 2002 USB2U has now establised iteself as one of the leading supplier of branded flash drives and custom USB memory sticks in the UK. USB2U offer a free design and mock up service couple with great prices and outstanding customer support. Contact us today for a quote. We'd love to hear from you.

If you're struggling to get your pupils engaged and excited about Design Technology then you might want to follow in the path of a number of other UK schools that have challenged their students to design, build and package their own custom USB flash drives.

Whilst USB flash drives are not quite in the same league as mobile phones they are "techie gadgets" that the students will relate to and many will own and use already. Realistically we're not quite at the stage where a group of mixed ability students could design and build a working mobile phone from scratch but a working USB flash drive is pretty much within the grasp of anyone.

OK, they might need a little bit of direction and encouragement but the ready availability of the core components means that building a flash drive is more of a design and assembly task and requires no complex manufacturing. The results can be stunning and of course the student will be left with a working USB flash drive that can be used in anger to save and transport their school work on.

The internal components of a flash drive are; a flash memory module, a controller chip and a PCB chassis with a USB connector on the end of it. These elements can be purchased as a single component and then a body or "shell" designed and fabricated around it. In essence this is what the factories that produce the flash drives in volume in China do but they use standard "factory shells" that are in the public domain.

It would be relatively easy and not too expensive to take any "winning" design and produce it in volume for the school. Fully customised USB flash drives are popular business promotional products and are commonly used to encourage the sale of all manner of goods from Nike Trainers to Fork-Lift Trucks. The growth in the commissioning of custom versions has forced down the set-up and moulding costs to a point where they are only marginally more expensive than "standard" factory models.

So, as well as setting pupils the challenge of designing a building a custom USB flash drive it's also possible to do this in the context of a "competition" and put the winning version into production by way of an award. Get the design right and it would be worth approaching the commercial suppliers of promotional USB flash drives with the design. They might even be willing to buy it off you – it's a crowded market at the moment and all the suppliers are fighting for points of differentiation and a unique design would be something they may be willing to pay for.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/hardware-articles/custom-usb-flash-drive-get-kids-engaged-in-design-technology-4236557.html

Phil is part of the team at USB2U. Launched in 2002 USB2U has now establised iteself as one of the leading supplier of branded flash drives and custom USB memory sticks in the UK. USB2U offer a free design and mock up service couple with great prices and outstanding customer support. Contact us today for a quote. We'd love to hear from you.

The USB (Universal Serial Bus) Flash Drive is one among the most popular storage devices today. It consists of NAND-type flash memory storage device, which comes integrated with the USB interface. A flash drive has several benefits over other removable or portable data storage devices. They operate faster, have more condensed space, have more sturdy design, easy to carry, store huge amount of data and above all they are very much reliable as they do not contain any moving component. In spite of being more reliable than other data storage devices, which contain moving components, the flash drive may also fail at any point of time. They don't have answer to logical failure and data loss. In such critical situations, Data Recovery is required to retrieve your valuable and business critical data.

The computer reads and writes data from/to the flash drive using same commands as for the mechanical hard drives, with storage appearing to the operating system and user as other drives. The flash drives have a small PCB (Printed Circuit Board), which is protected inside a metal, plastic or rubberized case, powerful enough to carry without any additional protection. These drives are generally used to carry data or transfer it from one system to another.

Although, flash drives are fully protected against the physical crash and data loss, but they might suffer logical crash. The logical crash might occur due to file system corruption that organizes data on flash drive, accidental deletion, hard drive formatting, virus infection and many alike. When these situations occur, all of the stored data become inaccessible or the flash drive can not be recognized or read by your operating system. In such circumstances, it becomes essential to carry out Hard Drive Recovery to retrieve data from damaged drive.

Data Recovery in these cases require in-depth scanning of the affected flash drive using advanced scanning algorithms. This is best possible using recovery applications. These are highly automated tools, which carry out through scanning of the drive using high-end scanning mechanisms and retrieve all sorts of lost files and data.

These applications are known as hard drive recovery software. They come equipped with interactive and simple graphical user interface and thus let you go for easy and quick recovery, without demanding sound technical skills. With read only and non destructive conduct, these tools are completely safe to use.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a robust tool to ensure absolute recovery of lost data from USB flash drive or any other storage media. This data recovery software recovers data from FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file system partitions. It is designed for Microsoft Windows 7 RC 1, Vista, 2003, XP and 2000.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/data-recovery-articles/how-to-recover-data-from-flash-drive-1158812.html

K madhav is a data recovery expert and doing research on fat data recovery and disk recovery software.