GoKawiilThe humble USB flash drive has been among the most enduring pieces of consumer technology. After unseating the floppy disk as the portable storage medium du jour, flash drives began to hit the consumer market in the early 2000s, and they've been collecting dust at the bottom of backpacks and desk drawers ever since. Whereas floppy disks held very little data, flash drives came off the top rope with multiple whole megabytes of capacity and much faster data transfer rates. Those figures improved over time, scaling as flash storage increased in capability. But has the flash drive finally reached the end of the road?
The Museum of Obsolete Media still rates USB flash drives at a 1, indicating a low risk of obsolescence. As long as USB ports don't go the way of the dodo, neither will these convenient little drives. The increasing cost of other storage mediums is likely to prolong their popularity, too. But while there's no direct evidence of declining flash drive sales, they've fallen out of favor as people deal more regularly with large files and faster data transfer capabilities on newer hardware. Increasingly, more capable devices are needed, especially for people working in IT or creative professions.
So, what are thumb drives still good for, and should you be transitioning away from them? That depends.