I need 2 understand this...

[proximiti99]

USB flash drives:
To my understanding they are basically ram chips on pcb's compacted into a small casing with a usb connector. How does the drive retain the data when it has no battery to power it

 

[Kasyx]

USB flash drives:
To my understanding they are basically ram chips on pcb's compacted into a small casing with a usb connector. How does the drive retain the data when it has no battery to power it

It doesn't use "RAM" as such, but rather what's known as a solid state drive (much like the SD card you would put into your camera or cellphone).

 

[Ou grote]

And soon all Notebooks will be using them.

 

[Messugga]

Mine already does! *hugs his little EEE* The problem with the SSD drives in laptops is, that they're apparently not as fast as first though although seek times are crazy. Second thing is that they have a limited read/write capacity. How long they'll last, noone really knows, but if it's around the two year mark, then it's all good as most of my normal hard drives last that long as well, before the motor goes or something similar.

 

[SanchoP]

Ya. Flash memory isn't 'Ram'. Would be lightning quick if it was though.