Logo USB

USB 3.0 vs Super Fast USB 2.0

2011-02-03T12:16:00.000-08:00

These days it seems as though when it comes to computers and peripherals, everyone wants bigger, faster and better options. USB 3.0 is now with us and it can provide more speed than USB 2.0 flash drives can offer without costing the earth. Mfatech not only has USB 3.0 drives but also a super vast variant of the USB 2.0 flash drive.

Why Some USBs Fail

2010-12-11T08:51:00.000-08:00

Why USB Flashdrives Fail

Introduction:

People are buying various forms of storage these days. Most of the devices people use to store data today come in the form of flash memory devices such as USB thumb drives, or USB flash memory. These devices use NAND flash to store data. These devices are small and compact and very easy for consumers to move around. Preventing the need for USB data recovery is what consumers really need to focus on. People fail to back up these storage devices. Consumers need to be cautious when storing data as the devices that the data is stored on tend to fail with no warning. Many of the flash memory devices also known as thumb drives or USB sticks fail with zero warning. These devices fail for many reasons. Some devices fail due to bad workmanship and others fail due to improper use. The most common failures are from obvious damage such as plugging a USB flash memory device into a laptop of desktop computer and banging it by accident causing the port of the device to become broken, bent or damaged.

The Importance of choosing a good supplier:

Bad workmanship issues can cause USB flash memory storage devices to stop working at any moment. Manufacturers are constantly using cutting edge parts combined with outdated parts. When a manufacturer can save a few cents using say one type of circuit as opposed to the next more durable circuit on a USB memory device they will. For consumers this causes devices to fail faster and more easily. When end users of USB thumb drives unplug devices during a read or write function the device can fail almost permanently. Devices that are made with proven parts will tend to function normally if the device is unplugged during a read or write functions.

Some of the error messages some might encounter follow:

Common Windows USB Error Messages - USB Device Not Recognized by Windows - USB Error Messages

Status: Unreadable, Unknown Device
USB Device Not Recognized Window
Unknown Device
USB Unknown Device
USB Device Problem
USB Device Not Recognized in Windows
USB Device Not Recognized by Windows
USB Device Not Recognized
USB Device Not Recognized Windows XP
One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it. For assistance in solving this problem, click this message.

Precautions:

Many students and teachers use USB data storage devices at school or when on the road. Many of the people that loose data are students, professors or teachers. The best method is simple, back up your device onto another medium such as your home laptop or desktop. So to wrap this up; properly back up your important data. Use the proper software to make appropriate backups and always buy brand name USB storage devices. Non brand name devices tend to lead to faulty circuits and expensive USB data recovery. Be sure that your friends, colleagues and relatives read this story to prevent them from becoming a part of permanent data loss.

Super Fast USB2.0 Plus is now available

2010-09-27T09:36:00.000-07:00

High Speed USB 2.0 Plus is here:

Look at the Difference
	High Speed USB 2.0 Plus	Standard USB 2.0

Average Access Tome	0.02 ms

Sustained Read	95MB/S	35MB/S

Sustained Write	47MB/S	25MB/S

Random IOPS	5166

Controller	JM-601

Nand Flash	MLC

Input Voltage	5V+/-5%

Idle	0.5W

Active	1.0W

Model Choice	FL81 & FL82 - See link Below

Capacities Available	8Gb to, 128Gb	32Mb to 32Gb

Click here to Contact us for more information

Loading your USB with Portable Applications

2010-08-23T06:14:00.000-07:00

USB Sticks do more than simply carry data.

You can upload various portable applications.

See these sites for more details:

http://www.pendriveapps.com/filezilla-portable-ftp-client/
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/filezilla_portable

Note that this blog is not an endorsement of these sites or any of the content therein. Downloads are made at your own risk.

FIPS USB Security

2010-07-13T03:39:00.001-07:00

FIPS stands for Federal Information Processing Standards and is a US & Canadian military certification which is recognised around the world as AES compliant devices. It can be utilized by Federal agencies or departments for the purpose of protecting sensitive data on usb drives and other solid state media.

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) specifies a FIPS-approved cryptographic algorithm that is used to protect electronic data. The AES algorithm is a symmetric block cipher that can encrypt (encipher) and decrypt (decipher) information destined for your USB. Encryption converts data to an unintelligible form called Ciphertext; decrypting the Ciphertext cleverly converts the data back into its original form, called plaintext. This advanced AES algorithm is capable of using cryptographic keys of 128, 192, and 256 bits to encrypt and decrypt data in blocks of 128 bits.

USB and exchange rates

2010-07-12T12:01:00.001-07:00

The relationship between USB drives and currency exchange rates is often misunderstood.

The majority of flash chips that that form are used as components for promotional usb drives are purchased in USD (US Dollars). The price of usb drives is therefore in part governed by the currency of final sale and the USD.

Card Shaped USB Connectivity

2010-06-26T06:47:00.000-07:00

One problem associated with card shaped promotional usb is the fact that they don't attach conveniently to hubs and computer usb ports that are in restricted areas. The solution is to purchase an extension lead (readily available from Mfatech). This lead connects up the card shaped usb drive to any usb port, even those in difficult to access areas.

The Future of Flash

2010-06-01T12:21:00.000-07:00

SanDisk's Harari Talks Memory

Why mobile phones and MP3 players won't stop improving any time soon.

BURLINGAME, CALIF. -- SanDisk is in the business of making NAND flash memory -- the little chips inside mobile phones and music players that store data even when power is turned off. Flash memory keeps getting cheaper, and as it does, it is turning up in more places. Forbes columnist Lee Gomes talked with SanDisk Chief Executive Eli Harari about what the future has in store.

Forbes: So, Eli, you're the boss at SanDisk ( SNDK - news - people ) and, in that capacity, you're the expert on one of my favorite bits of technology industry trivia: How much stuff can I fit on something the size of my fingernail?

Yahoo! BuzzEli Harari: I have here an example to demonstrate the power of flash technology, a number of 16-gigabyte cards. These are tiny little cards that go into your cell phones. This little block here is one terabyte of memory. And of course, next year, it may be double that.

So, we all know about iPhones and iPods and iPads, as some of the "Greatest Hits" of Flash. What are some other places we might start seeing flash in coming years?

Flash today is everywhere. Flash has become the most pervasive personal storage media. And that's driven a lot by mobile phones. Any phone cannot play any DVD or any CD.

Real-Time Quotes

BATS Real-Time Market Data by Xignite

In the last quarter we sold 80 million of these cards for mobile phones. There are over a billion cell phones that have a slot now for that card. And that, we believe, will be the standard, the format for storing movies and, of course, for storing music.

Mfatech supplied logo usb to the corporate and private sectors.

SSD - AN overview

2010-06-01T12:20:00.001-07:00

SSD Drives – 28th April 2010

Solid-state drives (SSD) have been among the hottest hardware products for more than two years, with a good deal of uptake within the consumer PC, notebook and netbook markets in response to a precipitous drop in pricing in 2007 and 2008.

The fabricators of NAND flash chips, which are used to build SSDs, took a bath for more than a year beginning in 2007, even losing money on the products they sold. Pricing for NAND flash dropped as much as 60% year over year in 2007 and 2008.

"There was a definite oversupply of NAND. The problem was no one was making money in NAND or the memory industry at that point," says Steve Weinger, director of NAND flash marketing at Samsung, the industry's largest producer of NAND flash chips.

After the first quarter of 2009, however, SSD pricing leveled off and even increased as the economy forced NAND flash manufacturers to stop investing in new equipment and demand outstripped supply.

Research firm iSuppli Corp. says surging NAND flash prices last year hurt what was a booming SSD market. The price of a flash memory chips rose to $4.10 in the second quarter of last year, representing a $1.80, or 127%, increase from the final quarter of 2008.

Now, pricing is expected to flat-line until next year, when NAND flash chip fabricators will be able to reinvest their profits to ramp up production and begin selling higher-density products, industry experts say.

Where SSDs are used

SSDs were originally aimed at enterprise-class environments, with the highest quality single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash chips being used to ensure the highest performance and reliability. However, today, multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash, which stores more than 1 bit of data per cell and therefore offers higher capacities, is approaching the same performance and reliability as SLC through the use of special firmware in the drive's controller.

The performance advantage for SSDs in the data center is tremendous. A single SSD, for example, can produce up to 16,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS). In comparison, a high-end 15,000-rpm Fibre Channel drive maxes out at 200 IOPS.

"You can replace 10, 20 -- I've even heard of 30 -- spinning disk drives, with a single SSD," says Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Micron Corp., a fabricator of NAND flash memory chips and SSDs.

But you pay a price for that performance. The cost of enterprise-class SSDs can be as low as $350, for a Micron realSSD C300 consumer drive that can be used in a server, or as high as $7,000, for an storage array-class drive, Klein says. It all depends on the features and performance you want.

For mainstream consumers, SSDs also vastly outpace hard disk drives when it comes to performance. In many cases, they have more than twice the I/Os per second, dramatically reducing computer boot-up times and application load times. And, because there are no moving parts -- no actuator arms or motors -- SSDs are more durable and therefore may be better choices for mobile devices.

But lately, with the increase and subsequent stabilization of SSD prices, the benefits of SSDs have largely been lost on consumers who are more attracted to a hard disk drive's higher capacity and lower price.

"The problem today is prices are prohibitively high for the average consumer," says Gartner analyst Joseph Unsworth. "When you consider a hard drive, you can get a terabyte for about $90. If you look at an SSD -- the Intel one I had with 160GB was $400. The point here is SSDs will never, ever be able to match hard disk drives on price per gigabyte."

Unsworth says that, for consumers, the decision to buy an SSD rather than a hard disk drive with greater capacity will come down to understanding and being able to justify the higher cost of an SSD. In other words, they must be able to appreciate "the performance, the boot time, the application acceleration, the reliability aspects and the slightly better power efficiency" of a solid-state drive, he says.

Online retail sales represent 40% of all SSD purchases today, Unsworth says. The people who are buying SSDs online are mostly tech savvy gamers or professional IT workers who shop at sites like Newegg.com, Amazon.com and Pricegrabber.com. The pricier drives give them superior performance for higher-end PCs and laptops.

The other market for SSDs is made up of equipment manufacturers; laptop and netbook vendors such as Lenovo, Dell and Hewlett-Packard are purchasing them for use in their consumer products. But sales of SSDs in that market are by no means booming.

"There have been 6.5 million consumer PC and notebook products sold with SSDs," Unsworth says. "That's far from widespread."

"The demand on the [equipment manufacturer] side is at present modest. It's behind everyone's forecast," Klein adds.

Last year, about 2.2 million SSDs sold in the netbook market, while 2.3 million were sold for use in notebooks and 316,000 were sold for servers, Gartner says. This year, those numbers will double in some cases.

Gartner predicts that in 2010, 3.6 million SSDs will be sold in the notebook market, 6.4 million in the desktop market and 819,000 in the server market.

Revenue is also expected to more than double for SSD vendors. In 2009, consumer and enterprise SSD sales reached $1.3 billion. This year, sales are expected to hit $2.9 billion, Unsworth says. "We expect revenue to double in the consumer space and triple in the enterprise space," he says.

Gregory Wong, an analyst at Forward Insights, believes that for PC, notebook and netbook manufacturers, SSD prices will drop from about $1.90 per gigabyte today to about $1.70. Online shoppers shouldn't see any marked decrease in pricing and can expect to continue to pay $3.00 to $3.30 per gigabyte on sites like Newegg.com.

Compared with hard drives, which cost about 30 cents per gigabyte, SSDs are 10 times more expensive, says Wong. But there's a crossover point where the base cost of a hard drive -- about $40 -- would buy an SSD with about 16GB of capacity. The lower-capacity SSDs could be used to run a PC's operating system and key applications, while files could be stored on a secondary internal or external hard disk drive.

A bright spot

The SSDs that are experiencing stronger sales today are low-capacity models that are purchased for use as "boot drives." Most such drives offer between 40GB and 64GB of capacity and cost about $100.

Last month, vendors such as Intel and OCZ began releasing lower-capacity SSDs, betting that enthusiasts would purchase them as boot drives. Kingston sells a 30GB SSD and Corsair and OCZ have 32GB products.

"It's really about performance," Unsworth says. "They add an external hard drive with half a terabyte, a terabyte or more that's used for backup or as their video library, their multimedia library, etc."

Driving prices down

For SSDs to become more affordable -- and for manufacturers to drop their prices -- NAND flash fabricators must cut their prices first.

"We've come through the worst downturn this industry has every seen," Klein says. "It hasn't really been until the last two quarters that we've been showing a recovery. People may object to the memory guys finally making some money, but frankly this is what allows us to build for their future. This is what allows us to start ramping up our Singapore [fabrication facility]."

Ultimately, only an increase in production will drive SSD prices down, and that isn't expected to begin until 2011, say Klein and others. Until that time, prices may dip somewhat as NAND flash manufacturers begin selling higher density flash chips based on lithography technologies that will drop below 30 nanometers in size.

Lithography is the process of creating cells and transistors in silicon, which are used to store bits of data. The smaller they are, the more data can be fit on a single NAND flash chip. At 25nm, the cells in silicon are 3,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair. But at that level, inter-cell electrical interference becomes a tougher obstacle to tackle.

Today, most manufacturers are using lithography in the 30nm to 40nm range. Micron, Intel and Samsung are using 34nm; Toshiba is using 32nm.

By moving to 25nm technology, manufacturers can double the number of bits stored on a wafer.

Micron and Intel have both announced that they'll be shipping 25nm products later this year. South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor plans to use 26nm manufacturing. Samsung plans a 27nm chip and Toshiba is moving to a 24nm chip.

And, here's the best news of all: Consumers will be the first to get the new SSD technology through the online retail channel, Unsworth says.

"If they're going to use that finer process ... for PC manufacturers, that requires a qualification time," Unsworth says. "They need to test them and make sure the SSDs [are durable], and make sure they don't get those calls from consumers, because that's who'll be calling [the PC and notebook] vendors."

Mfatech Limited provide Branded USB to the corporate and private sectors.

Why USBs Fail

2010-06-01T12:18:00.001-07:00

Why USBs Fail

People fail to back up these storage devices. Consumers need to be cautious when storing data as the devices that the data is stored on tend to fail with no warning. Many of the flash memory devices also known as thumb drives or USB sticks fail with zero warning. These devices fail for many reasons. Some devices fail due to bad workmanship and others fail due to improper use. The most common failures are from obvious damage such as plugging a USB flash memory device into a laptop of desktop computer and banging it by accident causing the port of the device to become broken, bent or damaged.

When end users (often customers who have been given a Promotional USB Flashdrive) of USB thumb drives unplug devices during a read or write function the device can fail almost permanently. Devices that are made with proven parts will tend to function normally if the device is unplugged during a read or write functions. Some of the error messages some might encounter follow.

Common Windows USB Error Messages - USB Device Not Recognized by Windows - USB Error Messages

Status: Unreadable, Unknown Device

USB Device Not Recognized Window

Unknown Device

USB Unknown Device

USB Device Problem

USB Device Not Recognized in Windows

USB Device Not Recognized by Windows

USB Device Not Recognized

USB Device Not Recognized Windows XP

One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it. For assistance in solving this problem, click this message.

So to wrap this up; properly back up your important data. Use the proper software to make appropriate backups and always buy brand name USB storage devices. Non brand name devices tend to lead to faulty circuits and expensive USB data recovery. Be sure that your friends, colleagues and relatives read this story to prevent them from becoming a part of permanent data loss.

The future of the Nand Flash Chip

2010-06-01T12:16:00.002-07:00

The Future of the NAND Flash Chip

When IM Flash Technologies (IMFT) announced this week that it's manufacturing a 25-nanometer (nm) NAND flash chip, the company also admitted that shrinking the technology much further may not be possible because of problems with bit errors and reliability.

If that turns out to be true, one of the basic building blocks used for storage in solid-state drives (SSDs) and memory cards may be nearing a dead end.

"I think in the next four years or five years, it's probably going to be the case" that NAND will no longer be the storage medium, said Gregory Wong, a flash memory analyst with market research firm Forward Insights. "Everybody's looking at alternatives." Currently there are numerous companies offering USB Flashdrives that contain this sort of memory chip so such information is of interest.

NAND flash memory has been the single biggest change to drive technology in recent years, with the storage medium showing up in data centers, high-end laptops like Apple's MacBook Air and in memory cards in mobile devices. Apple has largely driven the adoption rate with its use of NAND flash in its popular iPods and iPhones, sales of which helped drive flash memory costs down through mass production.

iSuppli Corp. forecasts that the global flash memory card market will grow from 530 million units this year to 9.5 billion units by 2013, a market that will then be worth $26.5 billion. The market for high-capacity memory chips has a lot of room to grow, according to iSuppli, largely because of the rise of smartphones. The more features they offer — whether it's touch screens, wireless Internet access or video capabilities — the more storage they need.

"As we move to high-definition video, that's going to require higher storage capacities," said Wong. "The issue, of course, is ... do you really need HD video on a tiny screen? No, but companies will use HD as a way to differentiate themselves."

For example, Samsung, the world's largest NAND flash memory maker, just released a new 64GB moviNAND embedded chip and 32GB microSD removable memory card for mobile devices. Both were created with its new 30nm lithography technology.

Steve Weinger, senior manager for NAND flash marketing at Samsung Semiconductor Inc., said mobile phone video capabilities and the desire to store a never-ending stream of applications, movies, television shows and video clips from sites like YouTube.com is driving chip development and a 34% annual growth in sales. In fact, NAND flash chip memory has doubled in capacity in a little more than a year, he said.

"You could eventually have in the palm of your hand all your movies, your pictures and everything else," he said. "I recently watched a football game on my iPhone with the DirectTV application. It was really crystal clear."

The problem, Weinger said, is that it's becoming difficult to make NAND flash memory denser.

Currently, the 25nm lithography being used by IMFT, a joint venture of Intel and Micron, is the smallest NAND production technique in existence. And an Intel spokesman was cautious about how much smaller NAND flash memory can reliably get. That's important because smaller chips means more capacity in the same amount of space.

"The challenge of stepping down in lithography is to continue to provide equivalent performance ... [to] previous products," Troy Winslow, director of NAND marketing at Intel, said in an interview with Computerworld. "Those were challenges we were able to overcome with this generation. But looking into the next couple of generations, we do recognize materials and process technology will have to change as obstacles mount."

Intel is already approaching atomic size with its lithography technique. Lithography is the process of creating cells and transistors in silicon, which are used to store bits of data. The smaller they are, the more data that can fit on a single NAND flash chip. At 25nm, the cells in silicon are 3,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair. And at that level, inter-cell electrical interference becomes a tougher obstacle to tackle.

According to Michael Yang, a senior analyst for memory & storage with iSuppli Corp., anything smaller than 20nm lithography is uncharted territory for NAND flash.

"Unless it can be proven that [10-19] nanometer or lower is possible with NAND, it will be a crossroads for a new memory technology," Yang wrote in an e-mail response to Computerworld.

In addition, the number of electrons that can be stored in the memory cell decreases with each generation of flash memory, making it more difficult for the cells to reliably retain data, according to Wong. Mfatech Limited are providers of promotional usb flashdrives and currently estimate that that a drive may be re-written hundreds of thousands of times

Multilevel cell (MLC) NAND, the most common type of flash memory used in consumer products, is in the midst of a transition from storing two bits of data per cell to storing three and four bits per cell. But additional bits per cell mean additional programming at the controller level order to ensure that each bit is accurately placed, Wong said. While programming for single-level cell (SLC) NAND is relatively simple, as only one bit can be placed in a cell, programming for two-bit and three-bit MLC NAND doubles or triples the coding required.

Increasing the number of bits per cell is not always the best answer. When IMFT released its 25nm NAND chip, the company's spokesman said in a Computerworld interview that the company had dropped production of a not-yet-shipping three-bits-per-cell MLC NAND product because of reliability issues. That technology, announced last August, used IMFT's 34nm lithography process and represented an 11% reduction in NAND flash size.

The major drawback of three-bits-per-cell technology is that it comes at the expense of performance and reliability," Kevin Kilbuck, director of NAND marketing at Micron, said.

Although IMFT still hopes to resurrect the three-bits-per-cell technology using the 25nm lithography process, Kilbuck said it's already eyeing technologies other than the floating-gate transistor technology now in use to continue down the path toward smaller, denser data storage hardware. Among those technologies are charge trap flash and phase-change memory. The company is also considering 3D-cell NAND, which involves stacking cells atop one another.

"It's just something we're looking at to extend the life of the NAND cell itself," Kilbuck said. "If we do end up going that route, we can leverage our DRAM process technology and cell technology, since DRAM has been utilizing a 3D-cell with some fine geometries. The goal is to keep scaling so we can stay ahead in cost."

According to Forward Insights, as lithography techniques shrink, bit errors increase, a problem that's compounded by the move toward three- and four-bits-per cell MLC NAND. Higher bit error rates require more error correction code (ECC) in the flash memory to detect data errors and correct them.

Traditional ECC, however, requires code redundancy and data read latency as the number of errors that must be corrected goes up, according to Forward Insights.

One technology several nonvolatile memory companies are exploring is Resistive Random-Access Memory (RRAM). Instead of using silicon as a resistive material, RRAM uses a filament or conduction path in the silicon.

Wong said RRAM technology may have an advantage over other emerging nonvolatile memories because it has a lower voltage for programming than phase-change memory and it could have a memory cell size comparable to NAND. "In other words, it is a potentially scalable technology," Wong said.

"There's no clear winner among the up-and-coming technologies, but with stackable 3D RRAM, there's a lot of advantages," Wong said. "The industry is quite innovative, so [it'll] find some ways to extend NAND. And when it is not possible to scale, an alternative technology will be in place." Mfatech Limited offer promotional USB Flashdrives.

What is USB?

2010-06-01T12:16:00.001-07:00

What is USB?

USB (Universal Serial Bus) is a specification^[1] to establish communication between devices and a host controller (usually personal computers).^[2] USB is intended to replace many varieties of serial and parallel ports. USB can connect computer peripherals such as mice, keyboards, digital cameras, printers, personal media players, flash drives, and external hard drives. For many of those devices, USB has become the standard connection method. USB was designed for personal computers, but it has become commonplace on other devices such as smartphones, PDAs and video game consoles, and as a power cord between a device and an AC adapter plugged into a wall plug for charging. As of 2008^[update], there are about 2 billion USB devices sold per year, and approximately 6 billion total sold to date. Many USB devices are sold as promotional items, sometimes referred to as custom flashdrives or promo usb.

The design of USB is standardized by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), an industry standards body incorporating leading companies from the computer and electronics industries. Notable members have included Agere (now merged with LSI Corporation), Apple Inc., Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Sony and NEC.

USB - An Overview

2010-06-01T12:14:00.000-07:00

USB – An Overview

A USB system has an asymmetric design, consisting of a host, a multitude of downstream USB ports, and multiple peripheral devices connected in a tiered-star topology. Additional USB hubs may be included in the tiers, allowing branching into a tree structure with up to five tier levels. A USB host may have multiple host controllers and each host controller may provide one or more USB ports. Up to 127 devices, including the hub devices, may be connected to a single host controller. USB devices are often used as promotional usb items.

USB devices such as the Custom USB supplied by many firms are linked in series through hubs. There always exists one hub known as the root hub, which is built into the host controller. So-called sharing hubs, which allow multiple computers to access the same peripheral device(s), also exist and work by switching access between PCs, either automatically or manually. They are popular in small-office environments. In network terms, they converge rather than diverge branches.

A physical USB device may consist of several logical sub-devices that are referred to as device functions. A single device may provide several functions, for example, a webcam (video device function) with a built-in microphone (audio device function). Such a device is called a compound device in which each logical device is assigned a distinctive address by the host and all logical devices are connected to a built-in hub to which the physical USB wire is connected. A host assigns one and only one device address to a function.

USB endpoints actually reside on the connected device: the channels to the host are referred to as pipes.

USB device communication is based on pipes (logical channels). Pipes are connections from the host controller to a logical entity on the device named an endpoint. The term endpoint is occasionally used to incorrectly refer to the pipe because, while an endpoint exists on the device permanently, a pipe is only formed when the host makes a connection to the endpoint. Therefore, when referring to the connection between a host and an endpoint, the term pipe should be used. A USB device can have up to 32 active pipes, 16 into the host controller and 16 out of the controller.

There are two types of pipes: stream and message pipes depending on the type of data transfer.

isochronous transfers - at some guaranteed speed (often but not necessarily as fast as possible) but with possible data loss, e.g. realtime audio or video
interrupt transfers - devices that need guaranteed quick responses (bounded latency), e.g. pointing devices and keyboards
bulk transfers - large sporadic transfers using all remaining available bandwidth (but with no guarantees on bandwidth or latency), e.g. file transfers
control transfers - typically used for short, simple commands to the device, and a status response, used e.g. by the bus control pipe number 0

A stream pipe is a uni-directional pipe connected to a uni-directional endpoint that transfers data using an isochronous, interrupt, or bulk transfer. A message pipe is a bi-directional pipe connected to a bi-directional endpoint that is exclusively used for control data flow. An endpoint is made into the USB device by the manufacturer, and therefore, exists permanently. An endpoint of a pipe is addressable with tuple (device_address, endpoint_number) as specified in a TOKEN packet that the host sends when it wants to start a data transfer session. If the direction of the data transfer is from the host to the endpoint, an OUT packet, which is a specialization of a TOKEN packet, having the desired device address and endpoint number is sent by the host. If the direction of the data transfer is from the device to the host, the host sends an IN packet instead. If the destination endpoint is a uni-directional endpoint whose manufacturer's designated direction does not match the TOKEN packet (e.g., the manufacturer's designated direction is IN while the TOKEN packet is an OUT packet), the TOKEN packet will be ignored. Otherwise, it will be accepted and the data transaction can start. A bi-directional endpoint, on the other hand, accepts both IN and OUT packets.

Two USB connections on the front of a computer.

Endpoints are grouped into interfaces and each interface is associated with a single device function. An exception to this is endpoint zero, which is used for device configuration and which is not associated with any interface. A single device function composed of independently controlled interfaces is called a composite device. A composite device only has a single device address because the host only assigns a device address to a function.

When a USB device is first connected to a USB host, the USB device enumeration process is started. The enumeration starts by sending a reset signal to the USB device. The speed of the USB device is determined during the reset signaling. After reset, the USB device's information is read by the host, then the device is assigned a unique 7-bit address. If the device is supported by the host, the device drivers needed for communicating with the device are loaded and the device is set to a configured state. If the USB host is restarted, the enumeration process is repeated for all connected devices.

The host controller directs traffic flow to devices, so no USB device can transfer any data on the bus without an explicit request from the host controller. In USB 2.0, the host controller polls the bus for traffic, usually in a round-robin fashion. The slowest device connected to a controller sets the speed of the interface. For SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0), connected devices can request service from host, and because there are two separate controllers in each USB 3.0 host, USB 3.0 devices will transmit and receive at USB 3.0 speeds, regardless of USB 2.0 or earlier devices connected to that host. Operating speeds for them will be set in the legacy manner.

USB Mass Storage - A guide

2010-06-01T12:09:00.000-07:00

USB mass-storage

A flash drive, a typical USB mass-storage device.

USB implements connections to storage devices using a set of standards called the USB mass storage device class (referred to as MSC or UMS). This was initially intended for traditional magnetic and optical drives, but has been extended to support a wide variety of devices, particularly promotional flash drives. This generality is because many systems can be controlled with the familiar metaphor of file manipulation within directories (the process of making a novel device look like a familiar device is also known as extension).

Though most newer computers are capable of booting off USB mass storage devices, USB is not intended to be a primary bus for a computer's internal storage: buses such as ATA (IDE), Serial ATA (SATA), or SCSI fulfill that role in PC class computers. However, USB has one important advantage in that it is possible to install and remove devices without rebooting the computer (hotswapping), making it useful for mobile peripherals, including drives of various kinds. Originally conceived and still used today for optical storage devices (CD-RW drives, DVD drives, etc.), several manufacturers offer external portable USB hard drives, or empty enclosures for disk drives, which offer performance comparable to internal drives, limited by the current number and type of attached USB devices and by the upper limit of the USB interface (in practice about 40 MiB/s for USB 2.0 and perhaps potentially 400 MiB/s or more^[6] for USB 3.0). These external drives have typically included a "translating device" that bridges between a drive's interface (IDE, ATA, SATA, PATA, ATAPI, or even SCSI) to a USB interface port. Functionally, the drive appears to the user much like an internal drive. Other competing standards for external drive connectivity include eSATA, ExpressCard (now at version 2.0), and FireWire (IEEE 1394).

Another use for USB mass storage devices is the portable execution of software applications (such as web browsers and VoIP clients) without requiring installation on the host computer.

A typical promotional USB can be seen above.

Available from http://www.mfatech.co.uk

Intel & USB

2010-06-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

Universal Serial Bus (USB)
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a set of connectivity specifications developed by Intel in collaboration with industry leaders. USB allows high-speed, easy connection of peripherals to a PC. When plugged in, everything configures automatically. USB is the most successful interconnect in the history of personal computing and has migrated into consumer electronics (CE) and mobile products.
The USB standard
Providing an industry standard, USB was originally released in 1995 at 12 Mbps. Today, USB operates at 480 Mbps and is found in over six billion PC, consumer electronics (CE), and mobile devices with a run rate of 2 billion USB products being shipped into the growing market every year. In addition to high performance and ubiquity, USB enjoys strong consumer brand recognition and a reputation for ease-of-use.
USB today
Today, Hi-Speed USB 2.0, provides greater enhancement in performance-up to 40 times faster than USB 1.0, with a design data rate of up to 480 megabits per second (Mbps). In addition, USB On-The-Go (OTG), a supplement to the USB 2.0 specification, was created in 2002. USB OTG defines a dual-role device, which can act as either a host or peripheral, and can connect to a PC or other portable devices through the same connector.
Portable computing devices such as handhelds, cell phones and digital cameras that connect to the PC as a USB peripheral benefit from having additional capability to connect to other USB devices directly. For instance, users can perform functions such as sending photos from a digital camera to a printer, PDA, cell phone, or sending music files from an MP3 player to another portable player, PDA or cell phone.
The move to Wireless USB
Wireless USB is the new wireless extension to USB that combines the speed and security of wired technology with the ease-of-use of wireless technology. Wireless connectivity has enabled a mobile lifestyle filled with conveniences for mobile computing users. Supporting robust high-speed wireless connectivity, wireless USB utilizes the common WiMedia* Ultra-wideband (UWB) radio platform developed by the WiMedia Alliance.
USB implementers forum

Information regarding upcoming events, documentation, products, compliance, and much more can be found at the USB Implementers Forum web site.
• Learn more
Intel and standards
Explore how Intel contributes to the standards that drive the industry.
• 802.11
• PCI Express*
• Digital home
• Ethernet
USB in the future
The next advancement in ubiquitous technology is SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0) that will deliver over targeted 10x the speed of today's Hi-Speed USB connections. The technology targets fast PC sync-and-go transfer of applications, to meet the demands of CE and mobile segments focused on high density digital content and media.
USB 3.0 will create a backward-compatible standard with the same ease-of-use and plug and play capabilities of previous USB technologies. Targeting over 10x performance increase at 5Gbps data rates, the technology will draw from the same architecture of wired USB. In addition, the USB 3.0 specification will be optimized for low power and improved protocol efficiency.
Industry collaboration
Intel formed the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) in 1995 with other industry players to support and accelerate market and consumer adoption of USB-compliant peripherals. Today, the USB-IF has over 700 member companies worldwide, and the board of directors is comprised of representatives from Hewlett-Packard, Intel Corporation, LSI Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, NEC Corporation, and ST-NXP Wireless.
The USB-IF is a non-profit corporation formed to provide a support organization and forum for the advancement and adoption of Universal Serial Bus technologies. The forum facilitates the development of high-quality compatible USB peripherals (devices), and promotes the benefits of USB products that have passed compliance testing.
Mfatech Limited offer Logo USB. These are essentially USB chips with a plastic housing which can be branded with your corporate logo.

History of USB

2010-05-31T12:50:00.000-07:00

History of USB

The USB 1.0 specification was introduced in 1996. It was intended to make it fundamentally easier to connect external devices to PCs by replacing the multitude of connectors at the back of PCs, addressing the usability issues of existing interfaces, and to simplify software configuration of all devices connected to USB, as well as to permit greater bandwidth for external devices. The original USB 1.0 specification had a data transfer rate of 12 Mbit/s.

USB was created by a core group of companies that consisted of Compaq, Digital, IBM, Intel, Northern Telecom, and Microsoft. Intel produced the UHCI host controller and open software stack; Microsoft produced a USB software stack for Windows and co-authored the OHCI host controller specification with National Semiconductor and Compaq; Philips produced early USB-Audio; and TI produced the most widely used hub chips. One of the co-inventors of USB was Ajay Bhatt, who was later given credit in an Intel television advertisement, though this overstates Intel's role in the development of USB. Compaq and Microsoft played roles equal to Intel, and Microsoft in particular focused on improving the user experience and enabling hot Plug and Play of devices.

The USB 2.0 specification was released in April 2000 and was standardized by the USB-IF at the end of 2001. Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Lucent Technologies (now Alcatel-Lucent following its merger with Alcatel in 2006), Microsoft, NEC, and Philips jointly led the initiative to develop a higher data transfer rate than the 1.0 specification (480 Mbit/s vs 12 Mbit/s).

Promotional USB Drives are available from Mfatech Limited

Kingston launch a Twister USB

2010-05-31T12:46:00.000-07:00

Kingston launch a Twister USB.

Sleek, practical and attractively designed, the affordable DataTraveler 101 G2 serves the needs of the budget-conscious user as well as those looking for significant storage capacity in a lightweight, compact drive. It features a capless, swivel design for added functionality and ease of use and is available in five fun colors by capacity. Ideal for anyone on the go, the new DT 101G2 with urDrive is like having a customizable, portable desktop — anywhere.

DataTraveler 101 G2 is also a great promotional item for businesses; your company logo can appear on it to increase your brand recognition.

DataTraveler 101 G2 is backed by legendary Kingston reliability plus a five-year warranty and free tech support.

Features

Convenient – Pocket-sized for easy transportability

Simple – Just plug into a USB port

Handy – Compact swivel design

Guaranteed – Five-year warranty

Customizable – Co-Logo program available

Fashionable – Available in multiple colors

Tech Specs

Capacities – 16GB

Speed – 16GB: 10MB/sec. read and 5MB/sec. write3

Dimensions – 2.25" x 0.68" x 0.39" (57.18mm x 17.28mm x 10.00mm)

Operating Temperature – 32° to 140°F (0° to 60°C)

Storage Temperature – -4° - 185°F / -20° to 185°C

Mfatech comment - A higher end of the market purchase at $27.00 makes this quite a reasonable drive. Our standard price for 16gb Promotional USB with your logo is £14.82.