How USB technology is Greening IT: Flash Drives and Energy Efficiency

Anybody looking for storage solutions to replace bulky external drive hardware and compact disc writing looked on in wonder over the past few years as manufacturers started to pack more and more storage power into small USB drives that offer 'direct plug in' capability, with easy hardware recognition features just like scanners and digital cameras. Easy desktop access and great portability made these items a hot commodity, and makers are still working on newer, more improved versions.

So how does a USB drive enable green tech practices? It begins with one of the primary energy cost factors: transport. With the power of these micro-drives, all of the expensive, energy-hogging storage of boxes of floppy discs, cds, and/or big plastic-shelled external drive units just went away overnight, and now data can be stored in containers much closer to its true 'zero-weight', erasing a lot of plastics-to-landfill and other hardware migration issues that lead to more and more waste on a daily basis. Another big energy saver is in 'mass use' theory: imagine a row of computer users taking turns on one powered workstation, each one using his or her own USb drive. Now think about each of those users powering up a separate laptop or desktop computer to handle their files. You get the idea.

To take the energy saving idea above even further, now some USB drives are getting more expansive in what they can do for users. New drives can boot up applications, connect with GPS, and generally do more for users without any external power structure. This ties back in to the idea of 'central power sources' (administrated by civic organizations or other agencies able to deal in best power management practices) instead of hundreds of individual users plugging in their own power cords and sucking a lot of juice out of the electrical outlets throughout a building. For some thoughts on the productivity of micro-tool flash drives, check out business stories by Serdar Yegulalp and Cora Nucci of Information Week.

We've already seen how the emergence of USB drives cuts down on plastic shell and high-energy production of hardware materials, but now, a company called INF is going even further, offering its 'recycled flash drive' with a shell made of compacted recycled newspaper. Take a look here and see how USB drives are going even more in a 'green tech' direction for creating almost no materials impact and a tiny carbon footprint for manufacturing, shipping and using data storage!