A jump drive - also known as a USB drive, flash drive, keychain drive, or disk-on-key - is a plug-and-play portable storage device that uses flash memory and is lightweight enough to attach to a key chain. A jump drive, which looks very much like an ordinary highlighter marker pen, can be used in place of a floppy disk, Zip drive disk, or CD.



When the user plugs the device into their USB port, the computer's operating system recognizes the device as a removable drive and assigns it a drive letter. Unlike most removable drives, a jump drive does not require rebooting after it's attached, does not require batteries or an external power supply, and is not platform dependent.

Several jump drive manufacturers offer additional features such as password protection, and downloadable drivers that allow the keychain drive to be compatible with older systems that do not have USB ports. Jump drives are available in capacities ranging from 8 MB to 2 gigabytes, depending on manufacturer, in a corresponding range of prices.

With a jump drive, data can be retained for long periods when the jump drive is removed from the computer, or when the computer is powered-down with the drive left in. This makes the jump drive convenient for transferring data between a desktop computer and a notebook computer or for short-term backup of small to moderate quantities of data.

You might be able to get the jump drive to work if you have the correct drivers for whatever version of Windows you are running on the old PC. Many flash drives, however, are not designed to work with Windows 95 or earlier. Some will not even work with the original Windows 98. If that is the case, life gets more difficult. USB support is very limited in many of these older PC's, so the obvious solution of using some USB device such as a flash drive, external hard drive, CD-R, or some other device may not work.

If that is the case, you need to do something like install a network card into the old PC so you can network it with the new one. Another option is to take out the hard drive from the old computer, put it in a USB enclosure. You can then plug it into the new PC and use it as an external drive.

You may be able to connect the old drive directly into the new PC, but most new ones use the new Serial ATA attachment rather than the old IDE attachment. If that is the case, you would still need to buy an adapter to make it work. Another option is to buy a USB floppy disk drive for your new PC.

You can not "edit" data on any CD. You can burn a CD and then you and re-write over that data and burn it again. You can not Edit or add to information on a CD. I would suggest a USB Jump (Flash)Drive easily purchased for maybe $30 to $40 US dollars and hold up to one or two GB's of information. A floppy disk only holds 1.44 kb (1.5mg) not even 1 high density photo. A flash drive is plugged into your USB port and you can work off of it the same way you do your hard drive.

Get too one for your backup that is put in a fireproof box in a different location than your computer and backup to it once a week or so. Look for a USB 2.0 Flash Drive. Portable reusable, storage device. Easily transfer data music and images, from PC to PC.