How do ﬂash drives work?

Find out how these versatile plugand-play devices can store data

Similar in nature to a conventional hard drive, a ﬂ ash drive is a very convenient device capable of not only storing data, but also transferring it quickly between computers and digital devices. A form of solid-state storage (electronic, with no moving parts), ﬂ ash drives are both robust and small enough to ﬁt in your pocket and yet can hold vast quantities of data depending on how great their storage capacity. Flash memory is a type of EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) stored as small blocks. The chunks of data stored using ﬂ ash memory can be erased and re-programmed electronically, making it a quick, effective way of transferring ﬁles.

When you insert the ﬂ ash drive into the computer’s USB port, the computer automatically detects the device. It then acts like an external hard drive, allowing you to immediately begin storing and retrieving data. The internal workings of a ﬂ ash drive consist of a small printed circuit board (PCB) that features some power circuitry and a few mini integrated circuits: one of these circuits provides an interface to the USB port, one drives the memory, and another – perhaps the most important – is the ﬂ ash memory as you can see from our annotation.

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