5 Reasons to say Goodbye to USB Drives

Does anyone remember cassette tapes that were used for data storage in the early home computer days? How about floppy disks in their various shapes and sizes? Moving on to CD’s, DVD’s and their several layer combinations, across mini disks to Blue ray disks was a fast transition by all means and all of them are way behind us when it comes to data storage. This unpromising future is what awaits USB drives too. Despite their practicality and functionality, USB drives have these five major flaws, a sufficient reason to say goodbye to them.

Plastic, no matter how sturdy it is in case of some manufacturers, has its serious limitations. Furthermore, the way it is plugged into a computer is an accident waiting to happen. If you have never broken a USB drive by unintentionally bumping into it trying to reach a pen or a cup of coffee, you are one of the rare users with such experience. Finally, the number of times files may be added and deleted is finite, though unlisted by the majority of users. All USB drives eventually show signs of malfunction resulting in data being unreachable or unreadable, which is frustrating, to say the least.

The fact that there is no possibility for the encryption of the data and no password protection for what is stored on a standard USB drive makes them an enormous risk for any professional use whatsoever. Frequent malware and virus infections add to the fact that the security of USB drives is questionable, to say the least. This may not be so important in case of family photos or newspaper copies, but when any business application is concerned, USB’s are unacceptable and should be avoided.

This day and age we live and work in is ever changing when it comes to technological advancements. Data storage volumes that once seemed enormous are seen in a pejorative light nowadays. 4GB hard disks of early personal computers seem as if have never existed and would not suffice for daily use in the today’s offices. The fact that USB drives are limited to their original capacity more and more makes them obsolete and less practical. True, what you pay is what you get, but that does not do the trick anymore.

USB drives do not provide backup option on their own. Since they are single storage drives, you cannot dedicate one part of a USB drive solely with a purpose of backing up important data. What this means is that you need to have and alternative storage option, be it another USB driver or a hard disk, or anything else for that matter, if you wish to be completely sure that your important data will be saved. Once you delete a file of folder it is gone forever and this significantly limits the potential use of USB’s.

Bearing in mind these five limitations, it becomes obvious that saying goodbye to USB drives is something that will be done more and more in the future. Just like any other obsolete technology, a place in the museum will eventually be the only place one will be able to find them.