USB Flash Drives

A USB flash drive holds data just like a computer’s hard drive. A USB drive provides a portable solution for carrying photos, music files, and documents with you to share with others. They are a valuable tool for any computer user. This guide explains how to use a USB flash drive for novice PC users running systems with Windows XP or Vista.

What to Know before You Buy a USB Drive

Depending on where you shop, you may see USB drives with varying storage capacities. You can find USB drives through many online retailers, electronic stores, and even your local Walmart or Kmart. Before you buy a drive, it’s a good idea to understand how much each storage size can hold.
Today’s drives come in sizes ranging from 256MB to 16GB. A Gigabyte (GB) is comprised of  1000 megabytes (MB). This naturally means that a 1GB flash drive would hold four times the amount that a 256MB drive would. 

• A 1GB drive could hold roughly 285 music files.
• A 1GB drive could hold approximately 1,000 picture files of high resolution.
• A 1GB drive could hold more than 100 average sized Word documents

The cost of a 1GB drive should be less than fifty dollars. For that amount, you can purchase enough storage to take documents, photos, and music files with you to a friend or family members’ computer. A USB drive can also be valuable for sharing documents between a work computer and home computer.

Every USB flash drive has a connector with a protective cap or slide retraction to safeguard the device from damage.

USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. Because all computers since the mid-late 1990s have USB ports, flash drives are a guaranteed way of sharing files between computers. Most drives have a slim design. Typically USB drives are as large as a human thumb. This has given them the nickname “thumb drives” in recent years. They are also referred to as pocket drives or pen drives.

Now that you know what to look for in a USB drive, you can begin learning how to use the new device.

Using a USB Flash Drive

To use a USB flash drive, plug it into the USB port on your computer while it is turned on. Laptops generally have ports on the side or back, while desktop computers feature USB ports on the face of the tower or in the back.

Once you insert the USB flash drive, you should hear an audible noise from Windows saying it noticed a new device (but this is not always the case). If Windows recognizes the drive, it will attempt to connect to the device.

Windows Vista should automatically open a small window where you can select what you would like to do with the drive. You can select “Open folder” to view files to begin exploring the USB drive.

Windows names the USB drive a removable device. If an AutoPlay dialog (such as this window pictured above) doesn’t appear when you plug in the USB drive, you can access the USB drive by navigating to the Start menu, clicking on Computer, and then selecting Removable Drive.

Once you’ve opened the drive, you will see all the files on the device through the standard Windows Explorer window.
You can move files to the thumb drive like you would move any files around on your computer.