A 2GB flash drive is a specific capacity model of the basic usb pen drive. If you’re looking for a convenient way to transfer data between your computers at work and home, you’re probably going to be fine with a cheap 2GB usb flash drive.
These flash drives work on the principals of the EEPROM memory chip. These chips have been around for two decades, but they were used for something slightly different before flash chips were introduced. The basic EEPROM has to be written in one session and has to be erased completely before anything else can be written on it.
Flashdrive
These limitations didn’t pose any obstacle for being used as BIOS chips in most computers and basically an electric device that needs to execute a program. The manufacturer written the program in the chip and it was fine for 10 years.
Thanks to continuous development these chips became suitable for data storage. Their capacity skyrocketed and clever controller circuits now allow for segmented data storage. In plain English it means that you don’t have to wait for the device to be completely erased if you want to copy a 5KB document on your thumb drive.
It also turbo boosts write and read speeds, since the controller chip can write multiple sectors all at once, and it means you can save or retrieve data several times faster than a normal EEPROM chip would have allowed.
The first pen drives were just 8MB in capacity but at the time when floppy with 1.44MB data storage was the market leader of rewritable storage media it was good enough to blow past the competition. Now there are 32GB and 64GB usb flash drives available, but the most popular version is still the 8GB pen drive.
These are commonly accepted as standard because these are the smallest pen drives that can store a whole DVD without having to split it first. If you don’t care for DVD size files or your work doesn’t involve you working with large files in general, a 1GB or 2GB usb flash drive may be a better solution.
These are still able to hold a whole CD should you ever need them to, but are cheap enough to even be given away as part of a promotion.
If you want to have a good quality 2GB device, try to choose one from the most respectable memory manufacturers. Kingston, OCZ or Crucial is more or less a name that makes sure your flash drive will be fast enough and won’t fail on you in a year.
Why is a 2GB Flash Drive Better Than a Bigger One?
