© Sandisk

Electronic gadgets continue to get smaller and ever cheaper. This means that it is now possible to carry a whole 16 Gigabytes of information in a tiny device on your key ring. If you think that a music CD is well under a GB, and a DVD film is about 4GB, then that is a huge amount of data on such a small gadget.

A flash drive, also known as a USB stick, is a tiny storage device that plugs into a USB socket on your PC and allows you to transfer files to or from the PC. Capacities are increasing all the time and prices are falling just as fast. It means that you can carry information from one computer to another, or simply create a backup of important data in case the unthinkable happens and your hard disk crashes.

© Sony

While high capacity flash drives are available, the most cost effective ones are currently around the 4 Gigabyte mark, with a 4GB one costing as little as £10.

Sandisk is a noted brand name in this area, along with Sony, if you want the reassurance of a named brand to store your valuable data.  There are however many own-branded or unbranded models which tend to be much more economical. Either way, if you don’t yet have a flash drive, have a look and see what they can do for you.

Rob

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