Computer users long complained that 3-inch floppy disks were too unstable, the ZIP drive not practical and CD-Rs not portable enough for data storage. The technology geeks solved this problem in ingenious fashion: the thumb drive. IBM came out with thumb drives in 1998, as a solution for replacing the less stable floppy disks. Their use caught on quickly, and as portable data storage has become more of an issue, thumb drives or flash drives skyrocketed in popularity. They can now be seen hanging on lanyards around the necks of computer users everywhere.

A thumb drive is portable memory storage. It is re-writeable and holds its memory without a power supply, unlike RAM. Thumb drives will fit into any USB port on a computer. They will also "hot swap," which means a user can plug the drive into a computer and will not have to restart it to access the thumb drive. The drives are small, about the size of a human thumb - hence, their name - and are very stable memory storage devices.

At first, some users saw their lack of compatibility with Windows 98 as a drawback of thumb drives, since so many users were still running that operating system when the drives were introduced. However, most thumb drives came equipped with software that installed a Win98 driver on the computer, enabling the user to connect a thumb drive. Installing the software took about 60 seconds. Thumb drives also pose security threats, since they are easily concealed. Users could copy proprietary information to them, or upload hacking software from them, all undetected by the system administrator.

However, system administrators can also upload anti-virus software to an infected computer from a thumb drive, for instance, without risking the system servers. Their write speeds and read speeds only really come into play when users are running large applications from them. When the user is saving text documents or photos, for instance, these speeds are not nearly as important. Most thumb drives also have millions of re-write cycles and will store data for ten years before they need replacing.

The thumb drive is available in storage sizes of up to 16 gigabytes. Most people, however, will find that sizes of 256 megabytes to 512 MB will do nicely. If the person is storing mostly text, with few images, then an even smaller thumb drive may meet the need.

A thumb drive is available anywhere computer supplies are sold. They range in price from about US$15 to $75 or so for a large-capacity drive. They are stable, versatile, durable and portable data storage devices. As such they are ideal for almost any computer user who wants safe, long-term storage for a low price.