16 Facts About USB key

USB key flash drive is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB key interface.

However, despite these lawsuits, the question of who was the first to invent the USB key flash drive has not been definitively settled and multiple claims persist.

Development of high-speed serial data interfaces such as USB key made semiconductor memory systems with serially accessed storage viable, and the simultaneous development of small, high-speed, low-power microprocessor systems allowed this to be incorporated into extremely compact systems.

However, because a flash drive appears as a USB key-connected hard drive to the host system, the drive can be reformatted to any file system supported by the host operating system.

Recent development for the use of a USB key Flash Drive as an application carrier is to carry the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor application developed by Microsoft.

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Usually, new firmware image is downloaded and placed onto a FAT16- or FAT32-formatted USB key flash drive connected to a system which is to be updated, and path to the new firmware image is selected within the update component of system's firmware.

Also, HP has introduced a USB floppy drive key, which is an ordinary USB flash drive with additional possibility for performing floppy drive emulation, allowing its usage for updating system firmware where direct usage of USB flash drives is not supported.

Premature failure of a "live USB key" could be circumvented by using a flash drive with a write-lock switch as a WORM device, identical to a live CD.

However, for installation of Windows 7 and later versions, using USB key flash drive with hard disk drive emulation as detected in PC's firmware is recommended in order to boot from it.

Furthermore, for installation of Windows XP, using USB key flash drive with storage limit of at most 2 GB is recommended in order to boot from it.

In October 2010, Apple Inc released their newest iteration of the MacBook Air, which had the system's restore files contained on a USB key hard drive rather than the traditional install CDs, due to the Air not coming with an optical drive.

Floppy disk hardware emulators exist which effectively utilize the internal connections and physical attributes of a floppy disk drive to utilize a device where a USB key flash drive emulates the storage space of a floppy disk in a solid state form, and can be divided into a number of individual virtual floppy disk images using individual data channels.

However, while virtually all PCs have USB key ports, allowing the use of USB key flash drives, memory card readers are not commonly supplied as standard equipment .

The ubiquity of SD cards is such that, circa 2011, due to economies of scale, their price is less than an equivalent-capacity USB key flash drive, even with the added cost of a USB key SD card reader.

USB key drives give little or no advance warning of failure.

The USB key plug is usually retractable or fitted with a removable protective cap.