Back up and Transfer Files with Ease Using Kingston Flash Drives
Flash drives are everywhere; the versatility and simplicity that they offer makes them a very common sight with many computer users. They easily facilitate the transfer of files from one computer to another and can be used for virtually everything, including running programs or entire operating systems completely from within the flash drive. With technology getting better and better, and storage capacities growing ever larger, flash drives will continue to be crucial computer accessories.
What is the difference between Mbps and MBps?Mbps stands for megabits per second, and is commonly confused with megabytes per second, which is written with a capital B when in acronym form. One megabit per second (Mbps) is a measurement for data transfer rate and is equal to 1,000,000 bits of data transferred per second. One megabyte per second (MBps) is also used for measuring transfer rate for data and is equal to 1,000,000 bytes of data per second. When it comes to data transfer, a megabit is one eighth the size of a megabyte, so when devices are measured by their data transfer rate in both Mbps and MBps, the Mbps value will always be eight times larger than the MBps value.
Are USB 2.0 and 3.0 storage devices compatible?The only difference between USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 is the speed that each supports for data transfer. In all other ways, the two USB standards are completely identical. As a result, a USB 2.0 flash drive can be plugged into a USB 3.0 port and it will be able to communicate properly with the computer. The same goes for a USB 3.0 drive in a USB 2.0 port. What is important to note, however, is that the speed at which the flash drive will be able to read or write data to its flash memory will be capped at whichever is slower, the drive or the port. What this means is that if either the drive or the port is USB 2.0, and the other is 3.0, the transfer rate will be capped at 2.0 speeds.
What formats are available for Kingston USB Flash Drives?All Kingston memory devices must have a particular file system formatted on them in order for a computer to be able to understand the binary code data that is encoded on them. There are several different types of file systems in use, but flash drives overwhelming use just two of them, NTFS and FAT32. Which file system you want to use for your flash drive is going to depend on a number of factors, such as the operating system of the device you use.
- NTFS - This is the standard file system used by most Windows based machines and is the default system for most USB flash drives. This file system can be used by most operating systems, but macOS is unable to write data to drives formatted with NTFS.
- FAT32 - The predecessor to NTFS, FAT32 is still widely used as a file system because of its excellent cross-platform compatibility. Virtually every operating system and device can interact completely with FAT32 formatted drives, both reading and writing data to them. As a result, if you come across a situation where you would need to be fully compatible with as many devices as possible, consider using FAT32 as your drive's file system to make this easier.