A small, portable flash memory card that plugs into a computer USB port and functions as a portable hard drive. USB flash drives are touted as being easy-to-use as they are small enough to be carried in a pocket and can plug into any computer with a USB drive. USB flash drives have less storage capacity than an external hard drive, but they are smaller and more durable because they do not contain any internal moving parts.
USB flash drives also are called thumb drives, jump drives, pen drives, key drives, tokens, or simply USB drives
There are many types of flash drives available to suit all different kinds of use, but to keep things simple we'll break things down into five different categories - Generic, High Performance, Ultra Durable, Secure, and Novelty. Of course, these categories are not all mutually exclusive. For example, a Secure flash drive with hardware encryption may also be Durable enough to withstand the crushing forces of a Honda Accord.
What we like to think of as Generic flash drives are the most common type sold, build for economy and raw capacity but not necessarily speed, and almost always encased in plastic. With the exception of a few manufacturers like Kingston, just about any flash drive with a product name that doesn't have a Mountain Dew-inspired suffix like "Extreme", "Lightning", "GT", "GTR", "Turbo", or "Ultra" will typically fall into this category. Likewise, any product that has such a suffix or is labeled as a high-end model would fall into our High Performance category and will employ higher-binned flash memory chips and better memory controllers to increase transfer speeds.
Ultra Durable flash drives can be either fast or slow, but are by far the most fun to review because we get to beat the crap out of them, all in the name of journalism! These can be encased either in rubber or a metal alloy to protect against impacts, and they may or may not have a watertight seal for the USB cap. Depending on the design, manufacturer's claims, and your definition of common sense, these babies can withstand drops/throws from the top of a building to a concrete surface below, are more likely to survive several rounds in the washer and dryer (if allowed ample time to dry before use), laugh at the notion of being baked in an oven, and love to be submerged at the bottom of a diving pool. Better still, some can deflect bullets up to a .50 caliber, or withstand the almighty crushing forces of Honda automobiles.
Secure flash drives include any flash drive that provides hardware encryption for ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of the stored data. These drives employ an onboard co-processor to handle the encryption algorithms, thus allowing the drive to maintain moderate read and write speeds compared to generic drives used with software encryption utilities. A secure flash drive's authentication method of choice can vary from a simple username and password logon to more secure biometric fingerprint scanners and funky combination locks.
Other secure flash drive features may include self-destruct sequences, tamper-evident designs, and centralized remote management. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published a document outlining cryptographic security levels in FIPS 140-2 (warning: pdf), and many drive manufacturers that wish to do business with large corporations or government entities will certify their drives against these standards. At the time of this writing, the highest rating achieved by a flash drive is FIPS 140-2 level 3.
Be sure to check the manufacturer's website for the method of encryption used; we recommend seeking drives with at least 128-bit AES encryption. Also be sure to register your flash drive with the manufacturer in case the drive's security is defeated and requires a recall or software update. In early 2010, Kingston, SanDisk, and Verbatim all had to recently face the music when their FIPS 140-2 Level 2 drives were "cracked" by a German security firm.
Novelty flash drives, last but not least, include any drive that stands out from the rest of the crowd either through the design or the inclusion of bundled features. A few conservative examples would be insanely small and key-shaped drives, split-drive, funky drive covered with Swarovski, beer drives, coin drive, Darth Vader-lookalike flash drive, or a biometric flash drive built into a Swiss Army Knife with Bluetooth presentation controls. Some of the more offbeat examples include gang signs, chain-saw, Transformers, hacked cable, and last but not least, uzi.
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