What is a Jump Drive?

One of the funniest things someone said to me is that she thought a jump drive was really called a "junk" drive. This made me laugh because that's essentially what some people use a jump drive for, storing junk or moving junk from one location to another.

A jump drive is a little portable device that plugs into a USB port on your computer (the same place where you plug in your digital camera or mp3 player). Think of it like a floppy disk only much better because it can hold a far greater volume of information and is a much more reliable form of storage. A jump drive, perhaps more commonly known as a flash drive, is relatively inexpensive. It's small enough to fit in your pocket so it's easy to carry wherever you go. For this reason, jump drives are commonly used by business professionals to transport files to and from the office. Students often need jump drives to work on assignments in school labs since it's easy to transport their work back home.

Even if you never leave your home to work on another computer you can use a jump drive to save back up copies of important files. Before you purchase your first drive, determine what you want to use it for. Jump drive storage is measured in megabytes (MB) and Gigabytes (GB). If you plan to store large image files or video on your jump drive you will want to look for a higher number, in gigabytes. If you just plan to transfer simple files such as word processing documents then you won't require as much space.

Be aware, once you have inserted a jump drive into your USB port, never pull it directly out of the computer without first making sure that you have taken the proper steps to safely remove the drive. This is true of most any device you would plug into a USB port. Find the menu bar on the lower right portion of your screen. Hover over the icons with your mouse pointer until you see an option to "safely remove hardware". Choose that option and wait for confirmation that it is safe. If you don't follow these steps, it could affect your ability to access those files the next time you need them.

So, whether you need a storage unit to keep your personal files separate from your work files, to transport content from one machine to another, to backup your digital picture files, or to take some "junk" off your computer, a jump drive is a very handy thing to have.