USB Flash Drives are indispensable for the students.

They are a fantastic tool to store and use documents and other important data. Moreover, talk to any student and they will let you know how they carry a USB flash drive—attached to key rings, customized with colors, shapes, objects, and much more!

With a USB flash drive, you can use your computers or laptops efficiently whether you’re at home or university, or school. There may be times when you want to continue work even after school hours; therefore, carrying a USB flash drive is very handy.

With all that being said, USB flash drives can cost students a lot; especially if you’ve lost one and have to buy another. Therefore, here are a few ways you can get USB flash drives for free.

Free USBs With A Purchase

There are many computer stores, and stores for cameras, cell phones, and other tech-related things that give flash drives for free with purchases.

Itpstyli

Itpstyli is a company that makes over 1000 styli for CMM, gear measurement equipment, and machine centers. To get a flash drive for free, you have to add it to the cart and save the cart as a shopping list.

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MyBioSource.com

The company sells biological reagents. If you’re in the field of biology, and need products in bulk, you can get a free USB flash drive, or even more, based on the items of your purchase. Your free flash drive will get you 8GB of storage.

You must also keep an eye on Best Buy, Tiger Direct, and NewEgg, as these tech retailers often give away tech items, including USB flash drives. They may also give away products when you refer people, share their promotional posts, subscribe to their newsletters, be a loyal online presence, or buy products from them.

Flash Drive Retailers

As you must have realized by now, there are very few stores that sell just USB flash drives. However, they do exist; and the chances of you getting a free USB flash drive from them becomes quite high. You can accomplish this through online contests, giveaways, store promos, affiliate programs, and more.

USBholic

USBholic is a Texas-based retailer that sells flash drives. You can pick a cute design from their store and choose the 4GB one. When you do so, you’ll see the price to be $0.01 per flash drive. Even though it’s not completely free, it’s close. USBholic ships flash drives to Europe, the US, Asia, and Oceania. However, please check the shipping costs to your place to see if it’s worth getting it shipped.

A USB flash drive with activity light gives the user visual feedback the device is working.

Click here to buy a USB flash drive with activity light. While on this site, consider some other advanced functions you might need, but didn’t think of. Advanced functions such as:

• Maybe you want the USB flash drive to be read-only (write protected)
• Maybe you want the USB to act like a CD-ROM drive
• Maybe you need to copy protect files on the drive – meaning people can view the files but they cannot print them, save them, screen capture, share, etc. The files can only be viewed.

These USB flash drives use an activity light and also provide the other cool functions mentioned above. The landing website offers six different body styles and an unlimited number of body colors along with free printing / branding if required.

Many small and portable flash drives do not have an activity light and we don’t like those types of drives. They don’t give the visual feedback we want to see.

Benefits of a Blinking LED Light on a USB Flash Drive

• Data Transfer Awareness: A blinking LED lets users know data is actively being read or written. This helps prevent premature removal of the drive, which can corrupt files.
• Visual Confirmation: The light confirms that the USB device is properly connected and receiving power from the host system.
• Diagnostic Aid: If the LED never blinks or stays off, users can quickly determine there’s a connection or drive failure without launching Disk Management or File Explorer.
• Multi-Drive Management: In environments where multiple USB drives are used at once—such as duplicator stations or kiosks—a blinking light helps identify which drives are in use versus idle.
• Security Awareness: In high-security environments, a blinking light can alert users if a USB drive is unexpectedly being accessed, suggesting potential unauthorized read/write activity.

The people who write for this blog prefer a USB flash drive with an activity light. The USB manufacturers have different settings for the LED activity light. Here is a screen shot of the mass production software tool used when making a flash drive.

There are two main settings for a USB activity light:

• On or Off setting for the LED on when device is ready
• Blink or not when flash memory is being accessed (this is for either read or write)

In our experience any USB flash drive with an activity light will have both of the above settings to On. Meaning the LED will be a solid color when connected and ready, and will blink as the device is being accessed for either a read or write request.

The most common LED color of a flash drive is red. However, we have seen green and blue LED lights on occasion. Most flash drives can be customized with specific LED colors if required. Lead times and pricing might fluctuate depending on what is required.

If you have a greyed out USB flash drive this article should be able to help you resolve the issue.

The most common reason is the USB flash drive has a different file system and you simply need to format the drive. For example, Ext3, Ext4 or HFS are file systems for Linux and Mac. By formatting the USB drive it could restore the drive and it’s no longer greyed out.

If this didn’t do the trick, then try the next suggestion ↓

It is possible the greyed out USB flash drive has a bad device driver. We can uninstall the drive and try re-installing the USB stick (reconnecting).

Do the following:

In the Search area type “Device Manager” and good chance Windows will auto-suggest before you are even done typing. Select Device Manager.

Alternatively you can click the Windows key along with “X” and from the list select Device Manager

Device Manager lists things alphabetically so scroll towards the button and expand the carrot > for Universal Serial Bus controllers.

In the sub-listing you will see the Mass Storage Device and then right click that device and select Uninstall device

Now the device drive has been removed, please reconnect the device and see if the greyed out USB flash drive is still greyed out.

If this didn’t do the trick we have one last suggestion for you before declaring the USB stick most likely dead ↓

This article explains how to encrypt data which can be decrypted on both a Mac and Windows computer.

Microsoft Windows accounts for almost 80% of the desktop computers with Apple OS coming in second place at about 18% market share (as of Q3, 2021) and with that in mind, it is very common for users to want encrypted data to be shared on both Mac and Windows computers. For example, the work place uses Microsoft Windows and the employee uses a Mac computer at home. To share encrypted data between these two operating systems is not straight forward. There is no installed solution from either Microsoft or Apple which provides a cross-platform encryption and decryption solution.

Two solutions are available for those who want to decrypt files for both a Microsoft Windows computer and an Apple Mac computer.

One solution is the individual user purchasing software which encrypts and decrypts software for both Mac and Windows computers.

The other solution is buying a physical drive which supports decryption on either operating system.

The second solution is more well suited for a business. This is true because the burden of purchasing software is not put on the employee or individual.

This article explains how to encrypt data which can be decrypted on both a Mac and Windows computer by using a specific USB flash drive.

The only known solution that has the following three characteristics in a product by Nexcopy. This is a company which provides feature rich USB duplicator solutions, but also provides advanced functions to flash drive, such as cross-platform encryption.

This is how the Nexcopy USB flash drive encryption solution works:

• PC based software is used to encrypt the data
• Included with the encrypted data are two software utilities loaded onto the flash drive
• The utilities run from the flash drive and decrypt the data when the correct password is entered
• The applications do not require installation, they run directly from the flash drive
• The PCViewer.exe is the Windows based utility – no admin rights required
• The MacViewer.app is the mac based utility – no admin rights required
• By launching the correct utility and entering correct password the files will be decrypted and displayed on the associated operating system

Please keep in mind there is a difference between the term “encryption” and the term “copy protection.” There is a difference.

Encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, for example plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. The ciphertext can only be reorganized and pieced back together from the authorized party who knows how the decipher the ciphertext back into plaintext. The important point to understand is that once the decipher has taken place, the user can do anything they want with the plaintext. The user can copy, duplicate, share, stream and screen capture that content.

Copy protection includes the process of encoding; however, has an additional layer of security whereby the user cannot do anything in addition to the content, such as copy, duplicate, share, stream and screen capture. Said another way, the files can only be viewed, but nothing else.

Encryption is a valuable technology where the content owner trusts the person with the password; however, needs security in case the USB flash drive was dropped, stolen or misplaced. Using encryption to protect the content means unauthorized users cannot access the information.

Copy protection is a valuable technology to protect the content, yet at the same time, allow many users to see the content. For example, a teacher might have valuable lessons they want all the students to see; however, they don’t want lessons to be saved or shared with other classes. This would be a good application for copy protection.

The manufacturer provides USB duplicator solutions for mass production of USB encrypted flash drives. Nexcopy also provides large scale USB duplicator solutions for copy protected flash drives. So depending on the specific needs of the individual or company, there is a solution for those who need encryption for both Windows and Mac computers.