Archive for the ‘about USB flash drive’ Category
Companies must account and deal for new legislation governing how information is stored on IT systems.
The EU is shortly to adopt many of the recommendations on corporate governance set out by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US, UK firms are to be expected to deal with and manage explicit guidelines on how to store email and other documents on their IT systems. IT managers should consider the necessary procedures and technologies needed for compliance now, in order ensure technology is able to deal with the new legislation.
Regulations regarding data storage at the moment are fairly lax, but there will be a huge increase in the amount of data than must be held over the next 18 months to two years.
Email archiving, the increased use of expencive write-once read-many media, information lifecycle management and content-aware storage as a few of the technologies which firms should consider for the future, though in some cases companies will simply need to improve the way they manage existing systems.
It is anticipated that new legislations will demand that an organizations’ archiving solutions must guarantee that the information they hold has not been changed, and keep it for a specific period of time before automatically deleting it.
A survey of 493 companies in the UK has shown that compliance with regulations has a high or fairly significant impact on the data storage strategies of 87% of the organisations surveyed. Back-up and recovery was also very important to the data protection strategy of 93% of organisations.
78% of organisations future storage strategy is set to include Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape technology. This may be due to the highly affordable and flexible nature of this new technology. For example, recent deployments of disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) solutions by various companies have, on average, reduced the backup window by more than 70%, from fifteen hours to less than four, yielding significant time and cost savings in tape management.
Interestingly, product features were far more important than the brand of the product, with 82% of organisations making a decision based on product features. When it came to the decision of choosing a specialist storage supplier or a general IT provider for storage solutions there was a very slight preference for specialised storage suppliers (51%) over general IT providers (49%).
This survey shows that compliance with regulations is a key driver in companies’ storage security policy and that we are likely to see more companies deploying Disk to Disk to Tape technology in the future.
All the above is fine if you are a corporate, you have an annual IT budget of £500,000 and numerous members of staff who can plan and complete such a system. Is it very easy to talk about SANs, NAS’s Virtual Tape Libaries. Organisations of this nature already have a very stable and flexible infrastructure, where it is comparably easier to implement such a system.
What about the 1000’s of smaller companies such as solicitors, accountants, medical practices and manufactures etc, which may have only 2 servers on site, but still have the same reliance on data and have to adhere to the same legislations? Backup to tape is an option, however, there is an upfront cost and a requirement for a trusted member of staff to take the tapes off site every night and store in a safe place. Can you guarantee your backup has worked, and do you really trust your long term data on magnetic media? Another option is to archive your data onto optical devices, however the cost is even more prohibitive than tape and you still need to take the disk offsite.
No doubt your data is growing quickly; recently enforced legislations makes sure of this, so why not employ a backup and archival solution which has no upfront cost, is fully automated, secure and regardless of disaster will ensure your data is always available, Offsite Backup.
When you store important information on a USB device, you take the chance of losing that information. Losing data on a USB can be kind of a mystery, but there are companies out there that can help you get that data back. These companies use engineering that can recover your lost data over ninety six percent of the time. These companies can even recover data that has been stored on a damaged USB device. So when you find yourself in a situation where you have lost valuable information you should not assume that this data can not be retrieved.
There are some companies that specialize in repairing damaged USB memory devices. In the process of retrieving your data, companies can also repair your device. Types of the problems they can repair broken solders, loose plugs, and broken internal connections. Some of the devices that they can fix are USB ports, USB sticks, USB drives, USB thumb drive, and Flash memory devices. These companies use a type of recovery called a jump drive recovery. They can recover any files from any type of USB drive or memory stick. Sometimes the chips inside the devices will be damaged, but don’t fret; there are some companies that can fix that problem too.
So the conclusion on USB data recovery is that just because information seems to have disappeared, doesn’t mean that it is lost forever. There are companies that can find and retrieve lost data on a damaged or removed USB device. In the process of finding data, the problems that caused the data to go missing in the first place will be fixed. This is helpful because it insures that it won’t happen again. There are programs out there that can help you retrieve your data by yourself, but the problem might be bigger than you know, so you should always seek professional help. There could be problems inside your device that prevent your device from working properly.
Flash memory gets its name due to its microchip arrangement in such a way, that its section of memory cells gets erased in a single action or “Flash”.
Both NOR and NAND Flash memory were invented by Dr. Fujio Masuoka from Toshiba in 1984.The name ‘Flash’ was suggested because the erasure process of the memory contents reminds a flash of a camera, and it’s name was coined to express how much faster it could be erased “in a flash”. Dr. Masuoka presented the invention at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held in San Jose, California in 1984 and Intel recognizes the potentiality of the invention and introduced the first commercial NOR type flash chip in 1988, with long erase and write times.
Flash memory is a form of non-volatile memory that can be electrically erased and rewrite, which means that it does not need power to maintain the data stored in the chip. In addition, flash memory offers fast read access times and better shock resistance than hard disks. These characteristics explain the popularity of flash memory for applications such as storage on battery-powered devices.
Flash memory is advance from of EEPROM (Electrically-Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) that allows multiple memory locations to be erased or written in one programming operation. Unlike an EPROM (Electrically Programmable Read-Only Memory) an EEPROM can be programmed and erased multiple times electrically. Normal EEPROM only allows one location at a time to be erased or written, meaning that flash can operate at higher effective speeds when the systems using; it read and write to different locations at the same time.
Referring to the type of logic gate used in each storage cell, Flash memory is built in two varieties and named as, NOR flash and NAND flash.
Flash memory stores one bit of information in an array of transistors, called “cells”, however recent flash memory devices referred as multi-level cell devices, can store more than 1 bit per cell depending on amount of electrons placed on the Floating Gate of a cell. NOR flash cell looks similar to semiconductor device like transistors, but it has two gates. First one is the control gate (CG) and the second one is a floating gate (FG) that is shield or insulated all around by an oxide layer. Because the FG is secluded by its shield oxide layer, electrons placed on it get trapped and data is stored within. On the other hand NAND Flash uses tunnel injection for writing and tunnel release for erasing.
NOR flash that was developed by Intel in 1988 with unique feature of long erase and write times and its endurance of erase cycles ranges from 10,000 to 100,000 makes it suitable for storage of program code that needs to be infrequently updated, like in digital camera and PDAs. Though, later cards demand moved towards the cheaper NAND flash; NOR-based flash is hitherto the source of all the removable media.
Followed in 1989 Samsung and Toshiba form NAND flash with higher density, lower cost per bit then NOR Flash with faster erase and write times, but it only allows sequence data access, not random like NOR Flash, which makes NAND Flash suitable for mass storage device such as memory cards. SmartMedia was first NAND-based removable media and numerous others are behind like MMC, Secure Digital, xD-Picture Cards and Memory Stick. Flash memory is frequently used to hold control code such as the basic input/output system (BIOS) in a computer. When BIOS needs to be changed (rewritten), the flash memory can be written to in block rather than byte sizes, making it simple to update.
On the other hand, flash memory is not practical to random access memory (RAM) as RAM needs to be addressable at the byte (not the block) level. Thus, it is used more as a hard drive than as a RAM. Because of this particular uniqueness, it is utilized with specifically-designed file systems which extend writes over the media and deal with the long erase times of NOR flash blocks. JFFS was the first file systems, outdated by JFFS2. Then YAFFS was released in 2003, dealing specifically with NAND flash, and JFFS2 was updated to support NAND flash too. Still, in practice most follows old FAT file system for compatibility purposes.
Although it can be read or write a byte at a time in a random access fashion, limitation of flash memory is, it must be erased a “block” at a time. Starting with a freshly erased block, any byte within that block can be programmed. However, once a byte has been programmed, it cannot be changed again until the entire block is erased. In other words, flash memory (specifically NOR flash) offers random-access read and programming operations, but cannot offer random-access rewrite or erase operations.
This effect is partially offset by some chip firmware or file system drivers by counting the writes and dynamically remapping the blocks in order to spread the write operations between the sectors, or by write verification and remapping to spare sectors in case of write failure.
Due to wear and tear on the insulating oxide layer around the charge storage mechanism, all types of flash memory erode after a certain number of erase functions ranging from 100,000 to 1,000,000, but it can be read an unlimited number of times. Flash Card is easily rewritable memory and overwrites without warning with a high probability of data being overwritten and hence lost.
In spite of all these clear advantages, worse may occur due to system failure, battery failure, accidental erasure, re-format, power surges, faulty electronics and corruption caused by hardware breakdown or software malfunctions; as a result your data could be lost and damaged.
Flash Memory Data Recovery is the process of restoring data from primary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally. Flash memory data recovery is a flash memory file recovery service that restores all corrupted and deleted photographs even if a memory card was re-formatted. This can be due to physical damage or logical damage to the storage device. Data even from damage flash memory can be recovered, and more than 90% of lost data can be restored.
USB which stands for Universal Serial Bus is a standard for serial communications between computers and other devices. It was first introduced in 1996 and was jointly promoted by Intel, Phillips, US Robotics and Microsoft. USB was developed so that many different types of devices could be accommodated under a single common interface. Due to this capability, nowadays USB devices are the most popular form of plug and play devices. In short, a plug and play device is an external device which we connect to the computer either for data transfer or to provide additional capabilities to the computer. Normally plug and play devices are used along with additional software which acts as a link between the device and the CPU of the computer. This software is called the driver.
Many other standards exist for such connections like PS2, but USB devices provide a distinct advantage over other standards mainly due to two significant reasons.
First, the USB standard allows devices to be connected to the computer without needing to restart the computer. For many previous standards, the computer needed to be restarted before the device could be used. Secondly, the USB device takes its power supply directly from the CPU thus eliminating the need for an external power supply cord. This was only possible due to the fact that USB devices typically consume very little power.
Nowadays USB devices are used for a number of purposes. The most popular adaptation of the USB devices is in the form of USB drives (also called pen-drives). These are basically devices which offer portable data storage facilities. Often these devices are as small as a keychain. With the advent of technology, USB drives can now store as much as 200GB of data and still appear very small.
Another important use of USB is for webcams which allow us to transmit and store photos and videos directly on our computers. Apart from these uses, USB also allows us to connect audio devices like iPods, microphones and speakers, network between different computers with USB routers and also provides an interface to link our other gadgets like mobile phones and PDAs. With Windows becoming more common it is now simpler to synchronize our gadgets as windows can automatically recognize and install our USB devices. Another new technology which is making waves is USB 2.0, which provides data transfer speeds of up to 480mbps (Megabytes per second).
The cutting-edge USB data storage devices make data storage easier and more portable. While the contents of everyone’s computer are unique in nature, the need to store, transport and archive data is almost universal. Unless you use your computer for occasional letter writing, email and marathon games of solitaire, you will need a data control strategy at some point. The first step in planning your strategy is to analyze the way you use your computer. Then you can determine what you want to save and whether to save it on an external drive, DVD or a USB data storage device.
All Work and No Play
Start with the work you do with your computer. Do you use it for professional reasons? Do you use it to keep records for a personal business? Are you working on the great American novel? Consider anything that needs to be archived; including completed projects that need to be saved should be backed up. Large projects can go on DVD’s if you have a burner. They can hold much more than CD’s and you can save a little money by storing completed work on record-only DVD’s. Work in progress can go onto rewritable DVD’s so that they can be updated periodically. If you like to bring digital work home, the answer is a USB data storage device. Work can be carried safely and compactly home, worked on and then resaved and brought back to work.
Some hobbies should also be backed up, of course. Any files that you don’t want to lose should be placed on removable storage and kept in a safe place. If you have ever lost a hard drive, you may feel the need to back up your programs as well as your files. Rebuilding a hard drive is an unpleasant task. You can buy a removable hard drive to create a copy of your basic set up. This includes your programs and the settings that you prefer. This keeps a copy of your programs safe from virus infections.
When you have files that need to travel, you should use a USB data storage device. A video project for a birthday party, digitally enhanced photos for a wedding shower or the latest videos from your favorite family rock band are excellent files to carry around on your USB data storage device. It is a temporary way to backup the entertainment as well as the best way to transport the life of the party to the party.
If you place an Autorun.inf file in the root folder of a CD or DVD and the Autorun.inf file contains an OPEN command pointing to a program file (e.g. OPEN=MYAPP.EXE), the program is launched automatically when you insert the CD/DVD in a drive. But if you place the same Autorun.inf file and program file in a USB flash drive and plug the drive to a USB port in a computer, the program is very likely not started automatically. Instead is a Windows menu shown, that contains a list of actions (commands) you can do on the USB drive.
It seems that is possible to give a USB flash drive / USB memory stick a behaviour that is very similar to autostarting CD’s and DVD’s. The only difference is that the user must press Enter or OK before the program is launched or the document shown, but after doing that things works in the same way. And in Windows Vista we can sometimes be so lucky that the flash drive is 100% autostarting. This is interesting because this means that we can have a particular program started in the USB flash drive when it is plugged in the USB port.
Example of an AutoRun menu interfaceOne very interesting use is to have a menu interface shown automatically when the USB flash drive is plugged in the USB port, in the same way that a menu is shown when a commercial CD or DVD is inserted into the disc drive. This seems to be possible. If, for example, the menu program has the filename “MYMENU.EXE”, an Autorun.inf file with the contents below can be created and placed in the root folder of the USB flash drive to handle an automated opening of the menu:
[AutoRun]
OPEN=MYMENU.EXE
ICON=MYMENU.EXE
ACTION=Show Menu
LABEL=My Menu
Although it is not complicated a create an Autorun.inf file, it is more time consuming to create a menu interface. There exists lot of products on the market that can create menu interfaces and some of them can also automatically create the necessary Autorun.inf file that is needed to create an autostarting USB flash drive. At our company we have a product named SamLogic CD-Menu Creator, that can be used to design and build autorun menu interfaces. If the menu will be used on a USB flash drive, CD-Menu Creator will create the necessary Autorun.inf file automatically.
USB sticks as corporate gifts!
Flash drives are at present the most versatile, efficient means of transportation and storage of computer data. Flash drives are also called as USB drives and thumb drives which come with a flash memory. Flash drives are very ideal for handling small amounts of data, which are rewritable. Flash drives are supposed to offer the original plug and play function. They are bit expensive, as any device, which has over a capacity of 1GB
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USB Flash Drives are small, light weight, removable and re-writ able flash memory data storage devices incorporated with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) connector.
USB Flash Drives offer several advantages over other portable storage devices like floppy disks in as much as they are more compact and faster can hold more data storage are more reliable due to their lack of moving parts and have a durable design. USB Port appears on almost every current mainstream PC and Laptop. USB flash drives use the USB Mass Storage Standard.
A USB Flash drive consists of small printed circuit board in a plastic or metal casing and so, USB Flash drive is sturdy enough to be carried in a pocket. The USB connector protrudes and is safeguarded by a removal cap and a USB Flash drive uses a standard USB connection, which allows to be connected directly to the PC.
To access the data stored on a USB flash drive, it must be connected to a PC and USB Flash drives becomes active only when plugged into a USB connection which is the source of power supply to the USB flash drive.
A small portable flash memory card that is plugged into the computers’ USB port, functions as a portable hard drive. USB flash drives are also called thumb drives, jump drives, key drives, pen drives or tokens.
USB flash drives with 32 mega bytes or 64 giga bytes memory capacity is a feasible product regardless of the amount of material to be stored.
Each USB flash drive has three components – a male type A connector (to interface with a hosting computer system), the USB mass storage controller (to store and balance the information to encrypt, transfer and decode very quickly) and a crystal oscillator (to give the best quality output).
USB Flash drive has a small circuit board and secure case to prevent damage to the circuit board. The end of the USB Flash drive is simply inserted to a port on the computer and can access the information as long as the computer is connected to a USB hub. The USB flash drive is a fast and convenient way to save and transfer the data. A USB flash drive does not need rebooting after it is attached, requires no batteries or an external power supply and is not platform dependent. USB Flash drive is also available with additional features like password protection and down loadable drivers making it compatible.
With USB flash drive even when the device is unplugged from the computer or when the computer is powered down with the drive left in, the data is retained for longer periods. This makes the USB Flash drive convenient for transferring data between the notebook computer and a desktop computer.
USB Flash drives are available at computer retailers or on Internet.