Chances are that if you don't have a flash drive within arm's reach as you read this, you at least know where to find one in less than five minutes. I bought my first flash drive in 2002, and I've never been without at least one ever since. We've left so many different storage devices behind -- floppies, CDs, DVDs, and, to some extent, mechanical hard drives, but even in 2025, the flash drive is still plenty relevant.
The last truly universal storage format
Because flash drives use USB as an interface, and USB is backwards compatible all the way back to USB 1.1, and USB is absolutely everywhere, flash drives are infinitely versatile.
You can plug it into an old TV and watch videos or look at photos, plug them into routers for network storage, use a flash drive to update the firmware of your car's infotainment system, and so much more.
I don't think there's ever been a storage format that's as close to universal as the humble flash drive. Sure, you'd sometimes find floppy drives on devices that weren't computers, but I am completely unsurprised to find USB ports on anything today. Children's toys, kitchen appliances, the list goes on.
Reliability when the cloud can't be trusted
Flash drives aren't designed for backup purposes or long-term cold storage of data. In the short to medium term, they're highly-reliable devices that offer totally offline storage. It's always a good idea to have several flash drives prepped for emergencies. For example, you should have one flash drive prepared as an OS 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's no internet.
Likewise, you can keep a suite of "portable" apps that don't have to be installed to run. Just plug the drive into any computer and have access to your software. You can go even further than this, and have an entire portable operating system on a flash drive by creating, for example, a live Linux installation.
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Get to work immediately wherever you go.
Posts 33 By Chifundo Kasiya Oct 13, 2025
This gives you a way to bypass whatever's gone wrong on a computer, or to use someone else's computer (or your own) without any of the privacy or security baggage of the primary system installation. In fact, there are live USB OS 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 flash drive when you're traveling, for example, or in your car. Copies of your passport, licenses, IDs, and so on. You should also have a copy of these documents in the cloud, of course, but believe me that internet access always seems to be an issue when you most need it to work.
Modern performance rivals SSDs
As USB speeds and flash memory technology have both improved, the speeds of flash drives also got much better over the years. My first 64MB flash drive bought 20 years ago took something like 15 minutes to copy the equivalent of its entire contents, but even a cheap modern flash drive could transfer 64MB of data in less than a second.
Higher-end sticks typically have speeds measured in the hundreds of megabytes, and these days so-called "SSD sticks" will give you around 1GB/s of read performance and almost as much write speed. Of course, they're basically SSDs squeezed into the form factor of a thumb 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 just left there as instant, 400MB/s additional storage.
PNY PRO Elite V3 Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 Flash Drive 7/10 Capacity 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB Speed 1000MB/s read | 800MB/s write Connection USB-C Type 3.2 Gen 2 Portable Yes
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I've already touched on how flash drives can be used for better security and privacy when combined with the right software, but the drives themselves can offer highly-secure and rugged data storage. While any flash memory can suffer from "bit rot", this takes many years to happen, usually under constant high temperatures, and can be avoided by simply powering the drive on periodically.
That issue aside, even non-rugged flash drives can survive being dropped and generally manhandled. You can encrypt the data on a flash drive using something like BitLocker to Go, making it highly unlikely that your data can be read without your password.
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Posts By Sydney Butler Dec 14, 2023
There are even specialized flash drives with hardware encryption, and even built-in biometric scanning. They cost more, but if you have specific data you can't risk sending via the internet, or need to keep on your person, but away from prying eyes, there are few better options.
Flash drives, or something very much like them, will be around for the foreseeable future. Despite the move away from physical media and local storage, there will always be a need for a universal, cheap, and offline storage device. Good thing we already have the perfect solution!
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