History of the USB Flash Drive
The Universal Serial Bus, or more commonly known as the USB, was first introduced back in 1996. Yes, the little device that almost everyone today takes advantage of in our technical world is about to turn 14! After almost 14 years of enhancing our lives and helping transform the world as we know it, let’s take a look back so that we can truly understand what a marvel the USB is.
The whole idea behind the USB originally was to make a universal connector that would make it fundamentally easier to connect external devices to your personal computers. Before the USB, depending on what type of computer you had, you had multiple different connectors and finding cables or even devices that were compatible with these ports was rather difficult. You could spend hours searching, and may not even find the external device that was compatible with your computer.
The USB also permitted greater bandwidth of external devices as well. This allowed for more information to be sent at any given moment; which subsequently made it more popular than any other technology of its kind. The original USB 1.0 configuration allowed speeds up to 12Mbit/s, extremely slow by today’s standards, but it was impressive in its day.
In 2000, the Universal Serial Bus got an upgrade and went to what has been currently used for a decade as USB 2.0. The first USB 2.0 devices started rolling off the factories in 2001 and were theoretically 20X faster than USB 1.0. However, most USB 2.0 devices were nowhere near the theoretical maximum speed up 480Mbit/s when 2.0 was first released, but as time went on and technology advanced, we began to see nearly all USB 2.0 devices approaching the maximum.
USB 2.0 also saw a giant influx of external devices that converted to the USB 2.0 protocol, including all the custom flash drives you see today! As companies started realizing the benefits of the USB, more and more industries started making USB 2.0 compatible devices; which allowed multiple industries to blend together and create revolutionary products.
Now, in case the news has not hit your ears, USB 3.0 has recently been released and USB 3.0 products have already hit the market. USB 3.0 once again revolutionizes the way USBs work and how fast they work. First off, the 3.0 standard introduces bidirectional data travel. This means that you can now download and upload files simultaneously. This multitasking ability has never been seen on a USB device before, but we’re pretty sure it is going to be truly revolutionary in terms of its applications.
Second, 3.0 increased the bandwidth by 10x of USB 2.0. It now boasts a top bandwidth speed of 4.8Gbit/s. What this really equates to is instead of taking upwards of 20 minutes to move a high quality DVD movie from or to a USB device, for example, it now only takes a little over a minute!
Lastly, 3.0 is more energy efficient than its predecessors. USB 2.0 protocols constantly used energy and checked every idle USB device for data transfer. USB 3.0 however uses a new protocol that instead of constantly checking USB devices for activity, the USB devices will signal the host controller and alert it that it is ready to start data transfer. This lowers the voltage from 4.4V down to just 4V.
It has been a long journey for the Universal Serial Bus, but one that has been well worth it. Today there are billions of USB devices on the market and with the induction of USB 3.0, that number is expected to climb. We hope this has been informative and if you have any questions about custom USB drives or USB packaging, don’t hesitate to contact PremiumUSB.
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