Does a USB drive get heavier as you store more files on it?
Posted By RichC on December 2, 2023
Loved this @Rainmaker1973 X.com post about digital storage and in particular USB flash drives (also enjoyed the photo):
Nope. Paradoxically (and theoretically), the more you save on a flash drive, the lighter it gets.
USB drives use Flash memory, which means the the ones and zeros of the data are stored on transistors.
When you save data, a binary zero is set by charging the float gate of the transistor, and a binary one is set by removing the charge.
To charge it, we add electrons, and the mass of each electron is 0.00000000000000000000000000091 grams.
This means that an empty USB drive (which mostly holds zeros) weighs more than a full USB drive (which has ones and zeros). Add data, reduce the weight.
Comments