The USB Drive

The USB drive, or thumb drive, is a miniature portable storage unit for online files. It can be used to transfer data from computers and carry large quantities of data in the palm of your hand. While perhaps not as relevant today with the creation of online clouds such as Google Drive and OneDrive, it still remains a reliable method for transporting large files. 

Creator 

The creator of the Flash Drive remains a controversial question to this day. Multiple companies and individuals claim they are the inventor, but no one is entirely sure. 

An Israeli company known as M-Systems filed the original patent for a "USB-Based PC Flash Disk". The company was a leading manufacturer of flash memory products like SIM cards as well. It was later purchased by Sandisk for 1.6 billion dollars in 2006 due to it being a leader in multiple markets. 

Pua Khein-Seng

In the same year (1999), IBM also filed a similar patent, as well as Pua Khein-Seng, who was the CEO of Phison Electronics Corporation out of Taiwan. There is one more company that claims to have made the USB drive known as Netac. This company was based out of China, but their claim is the weakest as IBM and Phison both had released versions of the USB drive by 2002, which was when they released theirs. The first company to actually sell a USB drive was a Singaporean company known as Trek 2000 International. The product sold was called a thumb drive.  

Towards the end of the century, people predicted the creation of this portable storage device and was considered bound to happen, which is where the conflict of origin originates. It is believed that each of these companies had simply made their own versions of the USB drive, so no one is able to take full credit for its creation. 

The reason for the invention of the USB was to create the ability to move and store data effectively as well as being able to simply store more data. Most computer users in the 1990s had to rely on floppy disks. Floppy disks only were able to hold 1.44 Megabytes (MB). For reference, a high-quality picture is around 2-5 MB, meaning that the process of moving any sum of data, even something as small as a singular picture, would require a tedious process and multiple floppy disks. The absolute worst flash drive you could purchase on the market right now can hold hundreds of times the amount of data a floppy disk can. 

Impact on our society

As I stated earlier, USB drives no longer have the intense impact that they did since the creation of online cloud services from Apple, Google, and Microsoft. However, they played a major role in revolutionizing data storage.

One of the main features of the USB drive is its convenience. Its small size makes it easily portable for commutes, such as school or work, allowing you to take data from home computers to work or for bringing online homework from the computer lab home in school. They are much faster than internet storage, which makes them the most efficient at transporting large amounts of files that would take longer online. USB drives also allow the user to run software applications off the drive, making software specific to a single computer able to work on any computer with a USB. It also can prevent data loss, most USB drive users (including myself) utilize them to backup their computer data in case of damage to prevent the loss of their data. 

The fact they remain relevant to this day despite the competition and convenience of other forms of data storage is concrete evidence of just how groundbreaking this invention was at the time. 

While the ease of use attracted people to this device, it also attracted hackers for the same reason. Hackers can use the devices' ease of transportation to spread malware from computer to computer by applying malware to the USB drive and plugging it into multiple computers. They can also use them to plug into your computer, downloading specific or even the entire computer's data to use against you. However, most of these threats are easily avoidable and did not cause the inventions' importance to our society to tarnish.