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CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

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Figure 10-47 Thumb drives

The smallest thumb drives are slightly larger than an adult thumbnail;

others are larger and more rounded. The drives are hot-swappable in all

modern operating systems. You simply plug one into any USB port and it

appears in File Explorer or on the Desktop as a removable storage device.

After you plug the drive into a USB port, you can copy or move data to or

from the drive and then unplug the unit and take it with you. You can read,

write, and delete files directly from the drive. Because these are USB devices,

they don’t need an external power source. The nonvolatile flash memory is

solid-state, so it’s shock resistant and is supposed to retain data safely for a

decade.

Current systems enable you to boot to a thumb drive, replacing the

traditional CDs and DVDs with fast flash drives. Most of the classic

bootable-utility-CD makers have created USB versions that seek out your

thumb drive and add an operating system with the utilities you wish to use.

NOTE Change the boot order in system setup when you want to boot from

a USB flash drive. If you use the wrong boot order, the BIOS will ignore the

thumb drive and go straight to the hard drive or SSD.

Flash Cards

Flash cards are the way people store data on small appliances. Memory cards

come in several formats, so let’s start by making sure you know the more

common ones.

CompactFlash CompactFlash (CF) is the oldest, most complex, and

physically largest of all removable flash media cards (see Figure 10-48). CF

cards come in two sizes: CF I (3.3 mm thick) and CF II (5 mm thick). CF II

cards are too thick to fit into CF I slots.

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