What is a Flash Drive?

Flash drives, which also may be called jump drives, pen drives, and thumb drives, are small flash memory drives with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) connection. Most computers have at least two USB ports which are typically located in the back of the computer tower or on the sides of a laptop computer. Some computers will have USB ports located on the front of the computer tower which is the case for all lab computers at Lower Brule Community College (LBCC). Students enrolled at LBCC this year received 256 MB Flash Drives from the bookstore.  The storage capacity of these drives is equal to the amount of data stored on approximately 178 floppy disks. This makes flash drives much more convenient than floppies or zip disks to carry from home to school. Flash drives are read and write disks which means you can open (read) and save (write) files to the disk. It is important to remember that while flash drives are more reliable than floppy disks, they are not fail safe. Back-up data stored on flash drive often by copying the files to your computer’s (C:) drive or burning the files to a CD.

 

How To Use A Flash Drive

Lab computers on campus will have two USB connections (Figure 1) in the front of the computer tower. Simply remove the cap and plug the flash drive in the USB port.

Figure 1

 

Once connected to the computer, a green arrow icon will appear in the notification area. Double click on My Computer on the desktop and the removable drive should appear (Figure 2) in the My Computer window. Double click on the removable drive to open.

Figure 2