Pen drive is the ideal for people who are looking for bigger space to store their data and want an easy-to-operate storage space. Transferring large quantity of data from one computer to the other has always been a problem, mainly due to lack of suitable data storing device. Storage mediums like CD, floppy and e-mails have always failed us in urgent times because of their shortcomings like small storage and large time-consumption for data transfer.

Pen drive is the best solution to end this problem. These USB flash drives are integrated with a USB interface. They are small, removable, lightweight and rewritable. Their main advantages over other storage devices are that they are faster, more compact, can hold more data and are much more reliable thanks to their durable designs and lack of moving parts. It is the revolution of pen drives that more and more computers are being made without the floppy drive while the USB port has to be present on almost every mainstream computer and laptop.

A pen drive consists of a printed circuit board generally in a metal or plastic. The memory storage of pen drives range from the usual to 250MB to 2GB or more. It is as small as a key-ring. For the pen drive to work, both the computer should be USB-compatible systems.

Pen drives are faster to use than downloading data through e-mail and easier than using dozens of floppies. Pen drives can store data, video and audio files, with plug and play ease. The best feature of a Pen Drive is you don`t need any software to make it work thus simplifying your work of copying or transferring. Moreover, it also does not require any type of battery. These features make the pen drive totally portable.

You don`t need to install pen drive for Windows 2000, XP or ME as it is done automatically by the operating system. But for Windows 95/98/98SE, you need to install the drivers manually.

These pen drives are most popular amongst system and network administrators. They can load them with information about configuration and software that can be used for the system`s maintenance, recovery and troubleshooting. They also enjoy noteworthy success in the field of PC repair as a mean for transferring recovery as well as antivirus software to infected computers, and also allowing a segment of the data of host machine to be archived for emergency cases.

Pen drives act as Application carriers and are utilized to carry applications for running on the host computer without installation. Some applications that use this technique are U3 and airWRX. An open software platform, Portableapps also allows similar functionality on non-U3 drives. But undoubtedly the most common use of pen drive is for personal data transportation you can transport and store your personal files like documents, videos and pictures. You can also store certain medical alert data on Medic Tag flash drives to be used in case of emergencies and for preparation of disaster. Apart from this, pen drives are used in Audio players.

Pen drives present a considerable security challenge for big organizations. Their ease of use and small size allows unsupervised guests or unscrupulous staff to smuggle off confidential data with little or no chance of detection. To avoid this, some flash drives have features like encryption of data stored on them. This is a preventive measure to stop an unauthorized person from gaining access to the stored data stored. Newer pen drives support the biometric fingerprinting for confirming the user`s identity. This process though costlier is a better way to protect sensitive data from leaking out.