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Flash Drives - History
By admin | April 21, 2007
The flash drive was first invented in 1998 by Dov Moran, President and CEO of M-Systems Flash Pioneers (Israel). The first flash drives were made by M-Systems and distributed in Europe under the “disgo” brand in sizes of 8 MB, 16 MB, 32 MB and 64 MB. The 8 MB version is considered to be the first USB flash drive. These were marketed as “a true floppy-killer,” and this design was continued up to 256 MB. Dan Harkabi, who is now a Vice President at SanDisk, led the development and marketing team at M-Systems. His most significant contribution was that the product be self-reliant and free of the need to install drivers. Nearly simultaneous development of similar products was undertaken at Netac and at Trek 2000, Ltd. All three companies have similar and disputed patents. Asian manufacturers soon started making their own flash drives that were cheaper than the Disgo series. IBM was the first North American seller of a USB flash drive, and marketed an 8 MB version of the product in 2001 under the “Memory Key” moniker. IBM later introduced a 16 MB version manufactured by Trek 2000, and returned to M-Systems for the 64 MB version in 2003. Lexar can also lay claim to a USB flash drive product. In 2000 they introduced a Compact Flash (CF) card having an internal USB function. Lexar offered a companion card reader and USB cable that eliminated the need for a USB hub.
Modern flash drives have USB 2.0 connectivity. However, they do not currently use the full 480 Mbit/s the specification supports due to technical limitations inherent in NAND flash.
Thumb drives have become iconic as a sort of “fashion statement”, much like the iPod’s white ear bud headphones.
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash%5Fdrive, http://www.usbflashdrive.org/usbfd_overview.html
Topics: Computers & Software |