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.
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.
I remember paying 20 dollars to a guy at staples who had a 512 MB drive, instead if buying it for 45.
Oh 2003
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.
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 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!
I bought my first flash drive on sale for $12, a whopping 512mb. Fuck if I knew what to do with it at the time but I liked that I could carry cool pics and links to my favorite flash games with me. It wasn’t long after that I got my second, 2. fucking. gigs. Brought the entirety of Diablo 2 and a few Pokemon ROMs home from my uncle on that bad boy. Used it to put XBMC on an original Xbox. Got into Pirate video thanks to that thing. Still have it to this day, think it still has my d&d 3.5 collection on it.
The one I miss most though, tasteful little orange steel swing design. Wore it at all times as a necklace because it had this minimalist jewelry vibe. I had a live Ubuntu boot and ftp client on it, filled the whole drive, but I could boot into that instead of most computers and remote home to access my computer. Blew a lot of minds in highschool with that. Accidentally left it plugged into a computer on the last day before graduation and never got a chance to go back for it. I’d kill for 128gb or higher with that same external design, but you can’t find them from reputable places these days.
To install Linux on a computer in my basement.
Edit: Oops, that was the last time.
I worked my way through college at my university computer lab (97-01). We went ALL IN on zip drives, so that’s what I used as my high capacity (lol) storage for longer than I should have (through maybe 2004-ish when the last drive died). Still have a bunch of disks around here somewhere. So…soon after that was my switch to thumb drives.
I think it was 1987, but we called them floppy discs at the time.
My first flash drive was $40 for 32 MB. I got at Fry’s around 2001. I still have it and show it youngn’s for a laugh. I tell them it’s the only one I’ve never lost because it’s the right size - about half the size of a flat pack of gum.
I had one of these
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbtSLaxP1scI didn’t use them much until I moved out. Up until then, I burned CD’s if I really needed something portable. PortableApps changed my workflow. I could plug that into a computer at the computer lab at college, and have my custom portable FireFox (pretty new at the time still) as well as OpenOffice, MediaMonkey and some others. I don’t recall how much I paid for the drive, but I think it was 256MB? This was around 2005.
