I remember that awkward period after we outgrew floppies but before USB flash storage became mainstream when CD-RW and CD+RW (Yes there was a difference and it mattered!) being peddled as the next portable storage format. My first USB stick was 128 megabytes and cost around $60. I actually still have it, but it may no longer work. I believe I bought it in around 2003 or 2004. I remember them steadily decreasing in price, or at least price per unit storage, very quickly over the ensuing years, to the point where they were giving away multi-gig sticks by around 2009 or 2010.
I remember having a Kingston USB drive like this
At Uni. I’d bought a 64MB MP3 USB player which replaced my mini disc player that got stolen. When buying I hadn’t realised how useful it would be for transfering uni work. Plus the uni had a fast connection so we could torrent MP3s real quickly (before they finally woke up and properly locked their machines and network down).
This was the fellow!
I think around 2003ish.
Y’all don’t forget the hot minute where Zip Drives with 100mb disks were almost a big deal.
I was the nerd with the Zip 250.
Then jazz drives…
I had a zip drive for a minute. Useless.
I still have mine.
It was a 32mb (megabyte) flash drive. that I used to hack my original Xbox, which I also still have.
I don’t remember the first time I used one, but the first one I bought was a 1GB PNY Attaché for about $29.99 in 2005, at Best Buy. I used that thing for many, many years, even after the glue holding the plastic failed and the connector receded into the housing. I still have it around here somewhere, it’s just a pain having to pull the connector out to use it.
I remember when we called those little USB devices dongles. And before flash drives, there were Zip drives. We’ve come a long way from floppy disks!
Man, I really do miss that slick feel of sliding a floppy disk in the drive. Or playing with the little moving piece on top that protects the disk until the spring breaks and then you have to manually tape and untape the window everytime you use it.
Some USB devices are still called “dongles”. USB Bluetooth and Wi-Fi dongles, for example.
Some companies still use license dongles for their software too.
When win95 osr2 came out. First Windows that supported it.
I had an mp3 player in 2003 that was basically just a usb stick with a minijack, two buttons, and a volume control. When inserted into what was essentially a battery case, it worked as an mp3 player. When inserted into my PC it worked as a USB drive. I loved the simplicity, and in a pinch I could use it for other files too.
128MB, iirc
I had a similar one. The earphones it came with were specifically designed to act as a strap as well so you can hang the mp3 player around your neck.
That’s so coolllll
In 2002, I was taking a computer programming class at community college. The teacher recommended a floppy disk since we’re just saving text files, but I got a 64 MB drive and loved it right away.
Back in 2003 or 2004 I had an MP3 player with 64MB of storage and a USB plug on one end (with a cap to cover it up), which technically counts as a USB stick.
I never used that for anything other than music files though.
My first proper USB stick I got in 2005 and it had 128 MB
I’m always carrying around an encrypted drive and at this point it’s basically an external SSD with a few TB storage.
Really handy while travelling internationally
I remember paying 20 dollars to a guy at staples who had a 512 MB drive, instead if buying it for 45.
Oh 2003
I don’t think I used one until about 2008. Until then they were pretty prohibitively expensive (for me, at least). I used CDs for most of my rather minimal data storage needs.
64MB, bought from a bestbuy store in 2003. I used it for college to print reports instead of the CD-RW method. Only problem was, many computers didn’t have the necessary USB drivers so they wouldn’t recognize the flashdrive (they were introduced with Windows XP service pack 3 which was not yet common), so you had to first install the drivers from a little mini-disk. But then you were good to go! I had a couple computers on college campus which i had pre-loaded with the drivers, so I world hope that one of them had nobody sitting in front of it… otherwise I’d pick a random computer and load the drivers onto it. I specifically looked for other computer labs that were off the beaten path since it increased the chance of getting the same computer.
Whenever it cost £35 for a 256MB stick. The Internet suggests 2003 or 2004 which tracks.
