flash drive

American

Trademark, ThumbDrive, or flashdrive

noun

Computers.

a very small, portable, solid-state hard drive that can be inserted into a USB port for storage and retrieval of data.

flash drive British

noun

a pocket-sized portable computer hard drive and data storage device See also key drive pen drive thumb drive USB drive

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

flash drives

plural

Etymology

Origin of flash drive

First recorded in 1990–95

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

flash drive

Meanwhile, Sandisk released a 1-terabyte $128 USB-C flash drive so small you can just leave it plugged in.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 11, 2026

A year after being handed a 20-year ban on filmmaking he dispatched a documentary with the title "This is Not a Film" to the Cannes Festival on a flash drive stashed in a cake.

From Barron's ● Dec. 1, 2025

Lexon’s beautifully designed refillable pen doubles as a USB flash drive with 32 GB capacity to store 4,000 pictures, 7,000 songs or 40 hours of video.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 16, 2023

“The idea that it’s not prior restraint because a bunch of information is contained in a flash drive ignores the 1st Amendment protection of information,” she said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2023

That night, after I shut off the lights and disabled the security cameras, I unlocked my entertainment unit’s maintenance access panel and installed the flash drive into an expansion slot used for firmware upgrades.

From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023