Flash drives are great tools when you need to transfer data quickly. However, valuable data should not be stored on them.
05.23.2024 – Nowadays, we can find a pen in every home. Sometimes someone uses it for classic data transfer, sometimes it happens when installing Windows or other operating systems. It can also come in handy if you need to quickly watch a downloaded video on a modern TV. However, they are often purchased for the purpose of data backup, but an external SSD, NAS or even cloud-based online storage can provide more sophisticated solutions for this. It doesn't matter, in the ideal case anyway They can last up to 10 years Data, but valuable files are not usually saved on the pen drive.
A pen drive (USB flash storage, USB key, flash drive, pen drive) is a compact flash memory with a USB connector. Today, their storage capacity ranges from 8GB to 1TB. In order to protect the electrical connection, it is made with a protective cover, but there is also a version without a protective cover and an extendable version. Flash drives store data using NAND flash memory, in the form of binary values (zeros and ones) in memory cells. These numbers 1 and 0 are represented by electrons trapped in a kind of “floating gate”. However, these electrons can leak out over time, meaning guaranteed data loss. Thanks to this, manufacturers calculate the maximum age from 16 to 20 years.
This is the flash drive that saves data for centuries, but it has a major drawback
CNX program To his website A really special flash drive is installed. The device uses electrostatic RAM, which has extremely low consumption and excellent write speed, while data can be overwritten millions of times. And last but not least, thanks to the different operating principle, you can keep the files on the device for 200 years. There's just one small problem: The gadget can store only 8KB of data. This is enough to store a few pages of text under real conditions, which is not very difficult. However, it can be ideal for passwords, cryptocurrency wallet keys, or other sensitive data.
The flash drive called Blaustahl, to be precise, can be obtained from the Machdyne online store For 29.95 euros. The soul of the device is provided by the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, thanks to which data can be transferred to it not (only) in the usual copying method, but by simulating serial communication, for example using the PuTTY application. It may take a long time and development until FRAM chips become widespread, and even then users will have to make do with such small sizes.
source: CNX
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