The Reference Desk is now selling flash drives, in addition to the older 3.5″ floppy disks and CDs. Flash drives connect to a computer through the USB port, and are also often called USB drives, jump drives, thumb drives, andor a few other names.

If you still use either 3.5″ disks or CDs to store or move your data files, switching to a flash drive might be worth considering. They are less susceptible to being corrupted by temperature, being dropped or bent, and are much more user-friendly.

Flash drives range in size from 32 megabytes (about the same storage as 28 3.5″ floppy disks) to 2 gigabytes or more (about 1800 floppy disks), and can range in price from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars.

The flash drives for sale at the Reference Desk are Memorex 32 megabyte flash drives, and cost $5 each. If you are interested, please stop by the Reference Desk on the lower level of the main library. We’ll also be happy to tell you more about flash drives, help you pick a model that better suits your needs, or help you transfer your files between disks.