Why I still carry a flash drive in 2025
Chances are, if you don’t have a USB drive handy as you read this, you at least know where to find one in less than five minutes. I bought my first USB drive in 2002 and have been without at least one since. We’ve left behind so many different storage devices: floppy disks, CDs, DVDs and, to some extent, mechanical hard drives, but even in 2025, the USB stick is still relevant.
The Latest Truly Universal Storage Format
Since flash drives use USB as their interface and USB is backward compatible up to USB 1.1, And USB is absolutely everywhere, USB sticks are infinitely versatile.
You can plug it into an old TV and watch videos or view photos, plug it into routers for network storage, use a USB drive to update your car’s infotainment system firmware, and much more.
I don’t think there has ever been a storage format as universal as the humble USB stick. Sure, you’ll sometimes find floppy drives on devices that weren’t computers, but I’m absolutely not surprised to find USB ports on anything today. Children’s toys, kitchen appliances, the list goes on.
Reliability when you can’t trust the cloud
Flash drives are not designed for backup or long-term cold storage of data. In the short to medium term, these are very reliable devices that offer completely offline storage. It’s always a good idea to have several USB drives ready in case of an emergency. For example, you should have a flash drive prepared as an operating system installation drive using something like the Windows 11 Media Creation Tool, Rufus, or Balena Etcher. This ensures that you can reinstall your operating system at any time, even when there is no Internet.
Likewise, you can maintain a suite of “portable” applications that don’t need to be installed to work. Simply plug the reader into any computer and access your software. You can go even further and have a complete portable operating system on a USB drive by, for example, creating a live Linux installation.
10 Portable Apps I Always Keep on a USB Drive
Get to work immediately, wherever you go.
This gives you a way to work around any glitches on a computer or use someone else’s computer (or your own) without any of the privacy or security baggage of the main system installation. In fact, there are live USB operating system images designed specifically to give you the ultimate privacy possible with nothing more than a reboot and choosing the USB drive as your boot device.
It’s also a good idea to keep offline copies of important documents on a USB stick when you’re traveling, for example, or in your car. Copies of your passport, licenses, ID documents, etc. Of course, you should also have a copy of these documents in the cloud, but trust me, internet access always seems to be a problem when you need it the most for work.
Modern performance rivals SSDs
As USB speeds and flash memory technology have improved, USB flash drive speeds have also improved a lot over the years. My first 64MB USB drive purchased 20 years ago took about 15 minutes to copy the equivalent of its entire contents, but even a modern, inexpensive USB drive could transfer 64MB of data in less than a second.
High-end drives typically have speeds measured in the hundreds of megabytes, and these days “SSD drives” will give you around 1GB/s of read performance and almost as much write speed. Sure, they’re essentially SSDs packed into the form factor of a USB drive, but the line between these two types of flash storage has always been a little blurry under the hood.
Look at the Sandisk Extreme Fit, which is designed to be plugged into something like a MacBook and then left there as an instant 400MB/s extra storage.
7/10
- Ability
-
256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB
- Speed
-
1000 MB/s read | 800 MB/s write
- Connection
-
USB-C Type 3.2 Gen 2
- Portable
-
Yes
Privacy and security in your pocket
I’ve already discussed how flash drives can be used to improve security and privacy when paired with the right software, but the drives themselves can offer highly secure and robust data storage. Although any flash memory can suffer from “bit rot”, it takes many years, usually under constant high temperatures, and can be avoided by simply powering up the drive periodically.
This issue aside, even non-rugged USB drives can survive a fall and generally rough handling. You can encrypt data on a flash drive using something like BitLocker to Go, making it very unlikely that your data will be read without your password.
How to encrypt a USB drive in Windows 10 or 11
Give your USB drive the James Bond treatment and protect your data.
There are even specialized flash drives with hardware encryption and even built-in biometric scanning. They cost more, but if you have specific data that you can’t risk sending over the Internet or need to keep on your person but hidden from prying eyes, there are few better options.
Flash drives, or something very similar, will be available for the foreseeable future. Despite the move away from physical media and local storage, there will still be a need for a cheap, offline, universal storage device. Luckily we already have the perfect solution!
9/10
- Ability
-
256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB
- Speed
-
1000 MB/s read, 800 MB/s write
- Connection
-
USB-C/A
