Flash storage media.
Flash memory is so named because the data is written to and erased from using electrical charges.
You may have perhaps heard someone say that they had to flash their mobile device.
This is quite similar to erasing flash storage media on smartphones and smart devices, except devices
with operating systems such as Android and iOS require a much more extensive procedure for flashing
and reinstalling their operating systems.
The end result, however, is very much the same in that the memory and storage areas are reset or wiped.
Flash storage chips come in two types known as Nand and nor flash memory and are responsible for high
speed and high capacity storage of data on flash storage media.
They are newer types of electrically erasable programmable read only memory.
Eeprom.
Chips and instead can wipe blocks of data or the entire drive rather than just one bite at a time.
As with the slower eeprom.
This type of flash memory chip is non-volatile, meaning the data is still stored on the chip, even
after power to the chip is lost.
Data is erased when specific instructions are sent to the chip in the form of electrical signals via
a method known as In-circuit writing which alters the data accordingly.
A flash drive with the Nand chip exposed.
Flash media storage has so far become the ultimate in portability, with many types ranging from the
size of your thumb to the size of the nail on your little finger.
The lifespan of flash storage all depends on the usage as they all have an average read write usage,
sometimes displayed on the packaging of the device.
The read write speeds are also some of the fastest at this point, which is why hard disk drives have
moved away from the traditional mechanical disk mechanism to a solid state one.
SSDs will be discussed further later in this lectures.
Important note with flash storage media capacities ranging from 2GB to 256GB, particularly on SD,
Micro SD and flash drives.
These can now act as very fast removable drives with operating systems installed on them and can even
be partitioned using various tools.
Yes, indeed.
Kali Linux most certainly can be installed onto a flash drive SD or micro SD card and be made bootable
with as little as eight gigabytes of storage space.