thumbdrive The world’s smallest computer data storage drive was invented by Singapore company Trek2000 and released in 2000. Also known as a pen drive or flash drive, the thumbdrive consists of a small printed- circuit board, which operates like a floppy disk or an external hard disk. This is put in a metal or plastic casing, from which the Universal Serial Bus (USB) connector protrudes. As it has no moving parts, it is very robust, and the data it contains will not be corrupted even if the device is dropped, scratched or gets wet. The thumbdrive is powered by plugging it into a computer’s USB port, and requires no other power source.