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Flash drive speeds and
sizes
Flash memory was invented by Dr. Fujio Masuoka
while working for Toshiba in 1984. According to Toshiba, the name
'Flash' was suggested by Dr. Masuoka's colleague, Mr. Shoji Ariizumi,
because the erasure process of the memory contents reminded him
of a flash of a camera.
Flash memory is non-volatile, which means that
it does not need power to maintain the information stored in the
chip.
Flash memory cards are available in different speeds,
specified by the manufacturer on the packaging. Faster drives
and cards usually costs a little more and it is worth spending
the little extra.
Write rates for flash drives are around 30MB/s
and fetch rates at about 50MP/s. Not too sloppy. But keep in mind
that a flash drive has a limited life span, to about one million
write/erase cycles.
The biggest flash drive to date was enveiled by
Samsung in March 2006: it stores a cool 32GB.
HT: Wikipedia
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